The dozen ships fell in-system on a ballistic trajectory, dragged in by the gravity well of the system's primary. Electronically silent, and with impeller nodes powered down but at standby, the ships were in full stealth mode - well, as stealthy as eight-million-ton-plus superdreadnoughts could be, anyway.
On the flag bridge of the flagship - the Sovereign-class pod-superdreadnought RHNS Haven - Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker studied the display showing the formation of the ships under her command with no small amount of satisfaction. Despite the crews' lack of experience, the formation was good; tight enough to allow for either a good concentration of fire or fairly rapid manoeuvring into a wall of battle, but loose enough to reduce the risk of collision.
Satisfied that her subordinates had things under control for now, she leaned back in her chair and thought about the overall situation. Damn it, what was *wrong* with the Manties? Did they *want* war with the Republic of Haven? As the commanding officer of Bolthole - Haven's top-secret shipyard, and the nerve centre of its efforts to bridge the technological gap between them and Manticore - she had been thoroughly briefed by Secretary of War Theisman regarding the progress of the peace talks. While she had shared Theisman's - and President Pritchard's too, from what she'd been told - annoyance over the dilatory pace of the talks, she also shared their opinion that no matter how slowly the talks went, it was certainly better than a resumption of hostilities. And apart from anything else, it had allowed Admirals Giscard and Tourville to root out the last of the Committee of Public Safety's holdouts.
Bolthole had been successful in a number of areas, as the Manties had found out to their dismay. The first Haven-built Multi-Drive Missile, for starters, had been built there, along with the first CLACs and up-rated LACs. Of course, they weren't as good as those used by the Manticoran Alliance - nothing in Haven service was - but the fact that they existed at all had come as a nasty surprise, first when Theisman had revealed Bolthole's existence, and then when they had been used in combat during Operation Thunderbolt; the opening operation of the renewed Haven-Manticore war. That operation had been a success - except in two locations, but those two locations had arguably been the most vital: Trevor's Star and the Marsh system.
Both of those setbacks hadn't come about as the result of anything the Manties had done, though - Shannon was of the opinion that the previous and unlamented High Ridge government had been incapable of pouring piss out of a boot, even with detailed instructions printed on the heel. No, it had been the Graysons who'd engineered the defeats at Trevor's Star and the Marsh system, first by sending elements of the Protector's Own Squadron to Marsh, ostensibly on a 'training cruise' and then using the terms of their alliance agreement with Manticore - no matter how badly the idiotic Janacek along with the other morons of the High Ridge government had allowed the alliance to fray - to ship still more of their fleet through the Manticore Wormhole Junction to Trevor's Star. At least Admiral Giscard had been able to break off without a shot being fired, unlike Admiral Tourville, who had been neatly trapped between the Manticoran and Grayson units, and had taken a hammering before managing to escape over the hyper limit.
Offsetting both of those setbacks, however, had been the success at Grendelsbane, where the shipyards and a stunning amount of new construction had been destroyed by the grossly outgunned Manticoran system picket before they retreated. According to Naval Intelligence - NavInt - the attack on Grendelsbane had been the triggering event for the collapse of the High Ridge government. Which was, Shannon reflected, both good news and bad news.
The High Ridge government had been the one who'd let the peace talks break down to the point where a resumption of hostilities had been all but inevitable. However, the new government that had formed had William Alexander as its Prime Minister, and both NavInt and the Foreign Intelligence Service were convinced that he would prosecute the war to the best of his extent, with the full backing of Queen Elizabeth III. The fact that both military and civilian analysts agreed on the broad details, and most of the specifics, was enough to convince Shannon. And, evidently, Secretary Theisman, too, since he'd removed her from Bolthole and given her a fleet command - the newly raised Third Fleet, which, along with First Fleet, would bear the brunt of combat operations around Trevor's Star until Second Fleet could be brought back up to strength. Obviously, Secretary Theisman thought she'd be of more use commanding a fleet rather than running Bolthole. On the second part of that statement, she was in full agreement with Theisman. Over the past four years, she'd selected subordinates who, like her, treated the Manties' superior electronics systems as a challenge, rather than a cause for despair, and who were equally determined to close the gap.
She wasn't too sure if she agreed with him that she'd make a good fleet commander, though. When Theisman overthrew the Committee for Public Safety - shooting Oscar Saint-Just personally, according to rumour - she'd been a simple tactical officer with precisely *zero* command experience; not even a LAC! In fact, sometimes she wondered how she survived the Committee years at all, given that, back then, she had a tendency to concentrate on tactical problems to the exclusion of everything else. But when Theisman had persuaded her to accept a fleet command, he'd shown her the personnel evaluations files submitted by both of her previous commanding officers; Warner Caslet and Lester Tourville *and* Denis Jourdain and Everard Honeker - their respective People's Commissioners, and they'd had nothing but nice things to say about her.
Thinking about Warner Caslet - her first commanding officer - brought almost-inevitable feelings of regret. He'd been forced to defect to the Manticoran Alliance after the series of events set in motion by the capture of Honor Harrington in the Adler system. It had been sheer bad luck that Cordelia Ransom had been in the Barnett system, overseeing the production of propaganda intended to inspire the citizens of the then-People's Republic to keep fighting once the system had fallen, which it was expected to do. Given Ransom's hatred for the military, it had been hardly surprising that she'd ordered Theisman to hand Harrington over to her, at which time she'd gleefully announced that Harrington was to be executed in accordance with the verdict handed down by the People's Court prior to the outbreak of hostilities, regarding the destruction of the Sirius in the Basilisk system.
Of course, the trial had been purest propaganda - after all, the People's Republic of Haven could hardly admit that they'd sent a fully armed Q-ship into Manticoran space. It was just that no-one had really expected Harrington to ever be in a position where the sentence was ever likely to be carried out.
Both Theisman and Tourville had been appalled by Ransom's decision, and Caslet had gone so far as to bitterly protest to Theisman, regardless of personal safety. Big trouble was headed towards Caslet - not to mention Tourville and Shannon, as well - but fortunately, Ransom had died when the Tepes was destroyed during the Manties' breakout in the Cerberus system.
That incident had also crystallised Shannon's own hatred for the Committee of Public Safety, but she'd been careful not to say or do anything about it, until Saint-Just decided to recall both Giscard and Tourville to Haven... where they would be shot. Seeing a perfect opportunity, Shannon implemented her plan, destroying the two-dozen StateSec superdreadnoughts assigned to Twelfth Fleet with but a few lines of computer code and an "Oops."
Shaking off that line of thought was an effort, but she managed somehow, and took another look at the main tactical plot, which showed the twelve green dots reassuringly glowing in the centre - ten Sovereign-class SD(P)s and two Aviary-class CLACs. And *no* screen of battlecruisers, cruisers and destroyers. Shannon had studied the reports from Operation Buttercup, along with Tourville's after-action report, and had come to the conclusion that lighter units - which had had no place in the wall of battle even *before* the advent of pod-based designs - didn't add enough missiles to make including them worthwhile. In fact, LACs could assume their other role of thickening anti-missile defences.
Well, that was the conventional thinking, at any rate. No-one had told the Graysons that, and with the same sort of outside-the-box thinking that had innocently led to the introduction of a whole new generation of inertial compensators, they'd simply designed a pod-based *battlecruiser* class - the Courvoisier II-class, which had seen action at Sidemore, along with the first dedicated space-superiority LAC, the Katana-class. In fact, it was starting to look like *Grayson* was becoming the heart of the Manticoran Alliance, not to mention-
"Grav pulse! Bearing two-niner-three, down azimuth zero-two-seven, consistent with Manty RD FTL com," the tac officer's snapped announcement interrupted, derailing her train of thought. "Range - three-point-four light-seconds." The tac officer turned to face Shannon. "It had us cold, Ma'am."
Shannon thought about demanding why the reconnaissance drone hadn't been detected prior to this, but thought better of it. After all, her ships had had their active sensors shut down - part of the impromptu training patrol that she'd arranged - and RDs sat inert until they picked up something and reported.
All of this went through Shannon's mind in slightly less than a heartbeat as she gave the necessary orders. "Bring up our wedge and sidewalls, along with active sensors. Go to general quarters, and pass on the same orders to the other ships." She paused and thought for a moment. "Order the CLACs to launch," she added.
Even as she gave those orders, Shannon knew that what was about to happen would be bloody. Despite her ships' impeller nodes being at standby, it would still take the better part of fifteen minutes to bring wedges and sidewalls to operational status, during which, they would be naked to any incoming fire with only point-defences in a position to make any contribution.
And there *had* to be Manty ships out there. If they were cleared for action, even a squadron of humble heavy cruisers would massacre her force. Shannon hoped they'd been just as surprised as she'd been.
She didn't feel confident, though.
Honor had thought datawork had been bad enough when she'd been a mere destroyer commander, but it had only gotten worse; first when she'd commanded the ad-hoc squadron sent to Yeltsin's Star as part of a diplomatic mission prior to the outbreak of hostilities; then as Mark Sarnow's flag captain in Hancock; and then there was her brief stint as commandant of the Advanced Tactical Course, while recuperating from the injuries she'd received during the breakout from the Tepes; and then...
The grey-and-cream coloured treecat sprawled lazily on the perch near her desk bleeked cheerfully, and Honor stopped reading long enough to send a glare his way. "Laugh it up, Stinker," she said sternly. "I *know* you've been told that it's impolite to enjoy other peoples' misery." Nimitz bleeked again, radiating a smugly satisfied air that clearly indicated that he was, indeed, drawing intense amusement from the situation.
"Keep it up, and there'll be no celery for you tonight... heck, for a *week*!" Honor warned, which had the same effect that she thought it would - in other words, none at all. <He knows I probably wouldn't follow through with it,> she thought ruefully. <And besides, knowing him, he's probably got at least a dozen people who'll slip him a stalk or two, when they think they can get away with it.> Such as Lieutenant Commander Edward Anderson, for instance. Like her, he was from Sphinx, and also like her, he'd been adopted by a treecat. It hadn't taken long for Nimitz and Sylvester to strike up a friendship - and both shared the same low sense of humour.
Nimitz made a reproachful sound and tried to look innocent, but the not-quite-suppressed amusement shading his emotions ruined the effect he was trying for - much like a barely-suppressed grin would have ruined a human's efforts at looking innocent. Shaking her head, Honor was about to turn back to the datawork when the com unit built into her desk buzzed. "Yes, Andrew?" she asked.
"Commodore Cardones and Captain Tremaine to see you, My Lady," her Grayson armsman replied.
Honor had gotten so caught up in the datawork that she'd forgotten about the informal meeting she'd scheduled with the commander of her heavy units and the senior Commanding Officer, Light Attack Craft - or COLAC - to discuss the effectiveness of the new tactics they were devising in the wake of Haven's Operation Thunderbolt and the resumption of hostilities. So far, the results had been somewhat mixed, but that was all right - it was only the first day, after all. She'd picked an uninhabited star system to avoid neutral - Solarian League - shipping 'accidentally' stumbling on any exercise area within the Trevor's Star system, and tempting the ship's captain to do something like selling his sensor data to Havenite intelligence when he reached his destination.
"Send them in, Andrew."
"Yes, My Lady."
The door hissed open, and Rafe Cardones and Prescott Tremaine entered the room. "Rafe, Scott," Honor said in greeting, and Nimitz bleeked his own hello. Rafe and Scott returned the greetings, and when Nimitz continued to look expectantly at them, Scott grinned and added, "Sorry, Nimitz. I don't have any celery for you today. Besides, I'd probably get into trouble if I gave you any."
Nimitz sniffed scornfully, and his true-hands flickered. {Not too much,} he signed, causing Honor to shake her head in resignation. "I know you like him," she told the 'cat. "But that's no reason to corrupt him."
"I don't mind, Skipper," Scott said cheerfully.
Honor shook her head again. Determined to get the meeting back on track, she asked, "How are the efforts going?" She was referring to the new tactics, which called for Katanas to escort the Shrikes and Ferrets on strike missions, to protect them from the Havenite Cimterre-class LACs.
"Pretty good," Scott replied. "Of course, there are some areas that need work, but it looks promising. We *think* we've worked out a way to reduce the triple-ripple's effectiveness, but that's something that's going to have to be tested in combat." He shook his head in not-so-grudging admiration. "Another 'Shannon Special'," he added, referring to Shannon Foraker, who'd devised the tactic.
Honor couldn't help but agree. The three Havenite admirals - Foraker, Giscard and Tourville - were just as good as any senior officer in the Manticoran Alliance, and now that the technological gap was starting to be bridged...
Just then, the com unit buzzed again. "Admiral, RD Three-Seven's picked up incoming Havenite ships - on visual, and at a range of just over a million kilometres. They're coming in ballistic and silent."
The tac officer's second sentence answered the question of how they'd gotten past the outer shell of RDs - partially, anyway; and the other part was probably that they'd come in from an unusual angle. Not that it mattered, anyway. Her ships had been caught in orbit with their impellers cold - the black-water equivalent of an anchored fleet - and it was only a small consolation that the incoming ships had to have cold nodes as well. There were people back on Manticore who hated her enough as it was, and this would just be more fuel for them to-
Nimitz, already half-way to his locker to get his skinsuit, paused for long enough to bleek reproachfully at her, and Honor knew that if he'd been able to, he'd also have nipped at her ear in the scolding way he usually did when he was reproaching his person. "All right, Stinker, I get the point," Honor told him as she ripped open her locker and grabbed her skinsuit. As she started stripping down, she paused and turned to Scott. "I assume you brought your skinsuit with you," she said levelly.
Scott nodded gravely. "Of course, Skipper," he said. "I learned my lesson on the Prince Adrian."
"Then you'd better go put it on, hadn't you? And pass on word to Chief Harkness as well," she added with a slight smile, despite the seriousness of the situation.
Scott looked at her in mock-surprise. "How'd you know he was here?"
"I didn't; I *guessed*. It was a reasonable assumption to make, given that the two of you have been inseparable ever since Basilisk."
"You know, Skipper," Scott remarked, "if I didn't know it was impossible, I'd say that Harkness had done something in BuPers' records." All three shared a brief chuckle at that thought. The Royal Manticoran Navy's Bureau of Personnel's - BuPers - computer systems were protected by the most advanced security systems in known space. It was ludicrous that *anyone*, even someone as skilled as Sir Horace Harkness, would be able to crack that security to the extent that modifications could be made to posting orders.
Then, a small element of doubt entered the minds of the three officers. This *was* Harkness they were talking about, the man who'd so compromised a StateSec battlecruiser's computers that they'd committed *seppuku* at his command with only the aid of a hand computer, and so skillfully that no-one had noticed until it was too late. Granted, Peep computers had been much simpler than those used by the RMN, but still...
Honor managed to shake off the irrelevant line of thought and continued giving orders, both to Rafe and over the com. "Have all hands come to General Quarters, and pass the word among the task force. They should already be coming to GQ, but I don't want to take any chances. Have Admiral Truman launch all LACs with anti-ship loadouts. And initiate emergency impeller activation, authorisation Hotel-Hotel-Zero-Niner-Bravo-Tango."
She heard both Scott and Rafe inhale sharply, and felt the surge of their emotions. Not that she blamed them; although it *was* possible to bring a ship's impellers on-line in a hurry by simply surging power through them, as opposed to the steadily increasing amount of power that was the normal activation process, it was most definitely *not* recommended by either BuShips or the manufacturer. Even if the ship trying it didn't blow up, the most likely occurrence would be inertial compensator failure. And even if it went off smoothly, it'd take a *minimum* of a full third from the operational life-span of the nodes, and BuShips *hated* replacing them without a damn good reason - they were expensive.
For that reason, any captain who found themselves in a situation where it was necessary had to use a specific authorisation code, which was entered into the ship's log for any subsequent investigation to examine. Of course, if a ship's captain found themselves in a situation where crash-activation was necessary, the bitching likely to come from BuShips would probably pale into insignificance next to the official wrath about to thunder down on said officer's head.
Of course, that was assuming that the officer - and the ship's crew - *survived* the situation in the first place.
Aboard two dozen ships, two dozen tactical officers gaped in surprise at what their displays were telling them. Almost simultaneously, they mashed flat their 'panic buttons', which activated the General Quarters alarms, brought up point defences and active sensors, and began the process of bringing weapons mounts on-line. The Havenite ships didn't have the option of crash-activating their nodes, but since they were starting from standby, in this case it wasn't really necessary.
As they watched, weapons mount indications began to switch from the red of 'inactive' to the amber of 'ready under central computer control', with a handful unexpectedly turning the green of 'ready under local control'. Strictly speaking, crews for weapons mounts were unnecessary, as they were a backup in case the telemetry links to the bridge failed due to battle damage.
Fire plans were entered and verified, and two dozen firing keys were mashed flat. The first salvoes would be relatively light, but each successive salvo would be the full throw-weight of a SD(P) as more and more missile pods were flushed.
By the time Honor had reached the bridge, the Invictus had shuddered no less than a dozen times, each time marking an occasion when incoming missiles had broken though the active defences and raked the hull with their bomb-pumped X-ray lasers. Hopefully, most of the crew had suited up, but the bridge watch had had no time for such measures, so Honor had detailed a couple of damage-control parties for skinsuit-grabbing duty, and she saw that her efforts had paid off, as almost every person on the bridge was either suited or mostly there. It would most definitely be uncomfortable - that thought caused Honor to squirm slightly as she settled into the captain's chair and Nimitz strapped himself into the specially designed harness; putting on a skinsuit in a hurry never was, particularly the plumbing connections - but at least they'd be safe from decompression if the bridge took damage.
"What's out there?" she asked, her clear soprano betraying none of the emotions that she felt. The skipper of one of Her Majesty's warships was *never* allowed to panic, even if her ship was being shot to pieces around her.
"The initial contact report was ten Sovereigns and two Aviarys, but so far, two Sovereigns have been destroyed, another crippled, and the rest have taken varying amounts of damage. The Aviarys have launched their full complement of LACs, but the Katanas seem to have that situation under control. Shrike and Ferret strikes have gone in, and done a fair amount of damage."
"And our damage?"
"We've also lost two ships, Ma'am," the tactical officer admitted. "One Invictus-class and one Harrington-class, plus varying amounts of damage to the others."
Honor nodded. She'd started the battle with twelve ships - four Invictus-class and four Grayson Harrington-class SD(P)s, along with two Minotaur-class and two Grayson Covington-class CLACs. From what was known of Haven's Sovereign-class SD(P)s, they were matched fairly evenly in terms of firepower, as well. Havenite designs tended to be fairly missile-heavy, but Manticoran ships were able to tie more pods into their fire-control systems, plus they had more missiles per pod. Haven's missiles had larger payloads, but Manticoran missiles were more accurate and had better penetration aids. Her ECM and ECCM systems were also better, along with point defences, but Havenite ships tried to make up for that deficiency by cramming more into their hulls.
Not that any of that was likely to matter, as none of the ships involved had their wedges and sidewalls up, which meant that the only defences available were their antimissile missiles and point-defence laser clusters. There would be no rolling ship in order to take incoming fire on the impenetrable roof or floor of a wedge, and it was impossible for *any* point-defence system, no matter how good, to stop all incoming fire.
Just then, the Invictus shuddered again as another missile got past the point defences, underscoring that fact.
Shannon was coming to a similar conclusion. This battle was going to be brief but bloody. Mutual annihilation wasn't out of the question, either. The Haven shuddered again as more lasers raked the hull, rupturing compartments, destroying weapons mounts, and killing and injuring more of her crew. In the few brief minutes since the exchange of fire started, she'd already lost a quarter of her force, and her LACs had been all but wiped out.
More hits registered, this time on the all-but-unarmoured top of the ship. Even in an eight million ton-plus, ship there were limits to how much of anything could be crammed in, and armour was no exception. Naval architects assumed that when a ship went into battle, they would have their wedges and sidewalls activated, which was generally the case. Since no weapon ever designed could penetrate the stressed gravity bands of a wedge, they'd left the top and bottom of a ship virtually unarmoured, in order to cram more armour onto the flanks. Sidewalls might shrug off conventional nuclear explosions, and be invulnerable to energy weapons at ranges greater than four hundred thousand kilometres, but they weren't invincible. Weapons like grav lances and laser heads, which brought their payload of bomb-pumped X-ray lasers within twenty-five thousand kilometres, were able to bring down or penetrate a sidewall, which meant that the armour saved from the top or bottom was placed on the sides, to protect against such weapons.
But *none* of that mattered now, since surprise had been total for both sides.
"Power surge!"
The startled call of her sensor officer drew Shannon's attention. "Report," she said shortly, wondering what new trick the Manties were about to unleash.
"It's in their nodes, Ma'am. If I had to guess, they're hot-loading them, trying to bring them on-line quicker."
Shannon nodded thoughtfully. Theoretically, it was possible, but extremely dangerous. She'd refused to put any hot-loading systems in Haven's new designs, simply because the high odds of disaster, combined with the sheer unlikelihood of such a system ever being required, made it not worth the risks and extra mass. However, it seemed that the Manties and Graysons *had* included such systems, which was interesting.
What was more interesting was the fact that the Manty commander was willing to risk their use. Now, who could that be? Hamish Alexander was immediately removed from consideration. Although he probably *would* do something like this, according to both NavInt and the FIS, he'd been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, and it was unlikely - to say the least - that he'd ever see action again.
Theodosia Kuzak? It was possible, but according to NavInt's dossier, it was unlikely that she'd use such a high-risk tactic.
Other senior Manty and Grayson officers were considered and rejected - except for one. But surely she wouldn't be here... would she?
Missiles flashed back and forth between the two rapidly closing groups of ships. One by one, ships were hammered into air-bleeding wrecks or vanished in the golden fireballs characteristic of fusion bottles losing containment in the most spectacular and catastrophic way possible. Through it all, LACs darted about, Shrikes firing their ludicrously powerful grasers into whatever targets offered themselves, and Ferrets unloading their missiles. Katanas hunted Cimterres, and a hundred savage, twisting dogfights erupted - but the Katana was specifically designed for this sort of fight, and the Cimterre wasn't, which meant that the Katanas had a decidedly lethal advantage.
There was one question raised which would prove difficult to answer - how was a ship to indicate surrender? The traditional method of striking the wedge was unavailable in this instance, since none of the ships involved had active wedges *to* strike, so each ship's captain had to work out something on their own. Not that many got the chance, of course.
In the end, it was the Manticoran LACs which decided the issue, but it was still eight minutes of some of the worst mutual slaughter seen since Old Earth's Final War.
The missile survived everything that was thrown at it, detonating twenty thousand kilometres above the Invictus. X-ray lasers erupted in all directions, most of them missing, but three raked the hull with their white-hot talons, rupturing compartments, and sending debris shrapnelling outward from the points of impact, and among those killed or injured was one Edward Anderson.
Honor convulsed briefly in her chair as she felt Anderson's death, and the keening grief of Sylvester. It was nowhere near as bad as when Harold Tschu had been killed in Silesia, since Nimitz was only friends with Sylvester, where as he'd been mated with Samantha, but it was still bad enough. She felt apathy immediately leeching into her personality, the 'why-bother-living?' feeling that afflicted all treecats whose person died or was killed. Samantha had felt the same, but Nimitz had been able to rekindle her interest in life, preventing her self-inflicted starvation.
Things were considerably different this time, however, as Nimitz was only friends with Sylvester, and the injury he'd taken on Enki had robbed him of his telepathic sense. That meant that unless something was found to rekindle Sylvester's interest, he'd simply stop eating and eventually starve to death. It was possible for a 'cat who'd lost their person to re-adopt, but Honor knew of only two occasions where that had happened. The late King Roger III - Elizabeth III's father - had been adopted, like his daughter, and Monroe had adopted Elizabeth's then-future husband, Justin Zyrr, after protecting him from a would be assassin in the wake of King Roger's own assassination. And Samantha herself had re-adopted - she'd adopted Hamish Alexander.
Honor shook off the feeling, and returned her concentration to the battle.
As the pinnace was slowly tractored towards the Manty ship's small-craft bay, Shannon sat in the front row of the passenger compartment, deep in thought. The only bright side was that some of her crew, at least, were still alive. But that just reminded her that nine-tenths of her crew were dead or seriously wounded. *And* that nine of her twelve ships had been destroyed, and the other three crippled. Her first action in command had been nothing short of disaster.
But she'd managed to inflict serious losses on the Manties, though. Five of their eight SD(P)s had been destroyed or crippled, along with two of their CLACs, and none of the others had escaped unhurt, either. In fact, she could see the air bleeding from compartments, along with short-lived bursts of flame, but those were becoming fewer in number as damage-control parties moved through the ship, making whatever repairs were possible.
It wasn't too long before the pinnace settled to the deck of the boat bay with a gentle thump, and Shannon was forced to contemplate her future, which would now involve *another* stint as a POW - which would probably be a lot longer than the first one, unless...
Her thoughts were interrupted when the entrance hatch hissed open. Any protest about the breach of protocol died down when the head topped by tousled sandy-brown hair poked through the opening. The man briefly scanned the interior of the pinnace with the brisk professionalism of a bodyguard before stepping fully through the hatchway, revealing his green-on-green uniform. Grey eyes widened in surprise and recognition, and he nodded a greeting to Shannon, who returned the gesture.
If Andrew LaFollet was here, then Honor Harrington couldn't be too far away.
Honor tried not to fidget as Andrew made a quick check of the Havenite pinnace. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate his watchfulness on her behalf - on more than one occasion that had saved her life - but there was such a thing as taking professional paranoia *too* far. Suddenly, his back stiffened, and she felt his surprise, which caused her to start to worry, but then his surprise became the little-boy glee that meant that he was about to put one over on his Steadholder... *again*. No wonder he got along so well with Nimitz, since they both shared what was, in her opinion, an unhealthy desire to play low tricks on her.
Andrew re-emerged from the pinnace, grinning broadly in a way that confirmed her suspicions. At least there was nothing harmful in the pinnace - nothing *physically* harmful, she corrected herself - otherwise Andrew wouldn't be grinning so broadly. She wished that Nimitz was here; she'd taken Sylvester to her cabin, and Nimitz was there keeping an eye on him. As expected, he was refusing to eat, despite the efforts of Scott and Rafe.
Her thoughts juddered to a halt when she saw who was following Andrew. Of all the people she'd expected to be in charge of the Havenite task force, Shannon Foraker had been last on the list.
The steward withdrew, leaving the bottle of Honor's prized Delacourt wine behind for the two admirals to consume at their own pace, and to allow private conversation. On the couch, Sylvester was curled up around his pain in near-complete silence, which was only intermittently broken by the occasional pain-filled keening noise, and Nimitz was hovering protectively over him. Shannon watched this for a few moments before asking, "What's the matter with him?"
Clean clothes had been found for her, until the search and rescue parties now going through her ships could return with some of her belongings. The fact that they were civilian clothes were of little consequence compared to the fact that she'd managed to shed her skinsuit. While it was possible to wear a skinsuit near-on indefinitely, only limited by power requirements, it soon became uncomfortable, and as a consequence, people only wore skinsuits for as long as strictly necessary.
"His person was killed," Honor replied simply.
"Oh," Shannon muttered. Ever since the inspired piece of invention that had saved Nimitz's life on Enki, she'd been interested in treecats, and had done some research on the subject. There hadn't been a great deal available, but the fact that treecats whose person died tended to stop eating was one of the publicly available facts. "I'm sorry," she added to Sylvester, who slowly raised his head - almost as if it was too much effort to do so, and in a way, it *was* - and nodded gravely to her. Nimitz added a soft bleek of thanks and twitched an ear at her. "I'd also like to thank you for the treatment my wounded are receiving. I know you wouldn't do anything less, but I still appreciate it."
Honor shrugged. "Even if I'd wanted to do anything else, my chief medical officer wouldn't let me." She grinned slightly before continuing. "I believe you know him - Surgeon Captain Fritz Montoya."
"Ah," Shannon replied. "No, I don't think he'd let you get away with anything nefarious - even if you'd wanted to."
"What I'm curious about is why we ended up shooting at one another again," Honor continued. "I know the way the High Ridge government dragged out the negotiations must have been frustrating, but surely there was a course of action other than resuming hostilities? And what was President Pritchard thinking when she renounced claims on all systems *except* Trevor's Star?"
"What?" Shannon blurted. "Duchess Harrington - Honor - we don't *want* that system. The San Martinos have made it *abundantly* clear over the past thirty-odd years that they don't want us their, either. Their request for annexation should have made that obvious."
"I know," Honor admitted. "I thought it was a negotiating position, myself, if not a particularly inspired one. But leaving that aside for now, surely Secretary Theisman must have tried to talk her out of it."
"He did. But when the communications from Manticore began to abruptly change tone to become more demanding, she felt that there was not much in the way of choice." Shannon placed her glass on the table and looked at Honor levelly. "Damn it, Honor, I know the High Ridge government was composed of idiots, but were they *that* stupid?"
"No," Honor admitted grudgingly. "The reason they were letting the talks drag out for so long was to wring the maximum possible advantage from the 'war-time' measures they'd enacted, or had left over from the Cromarty government. But why did Pritchard try to justify the resumption of hostilities by releasing altered versions of the communications from both sides?"
"What?" Shannon blurted. "Those were the messages we sent and received," she continued slowly, and Honor could feel her suspicion and gradually forming dread, and both Honor's senses *and* her link to Nimitz were in agreement that Shannon was telling the truth as she knew it.
It was a suspicion she shared, and a growing lump of ice settled in the pit of her stomach. If her suspicions were right, then Elizabeth was making a mistake, blinded by her hatred for Haven. Not that Honor could blame her, given that the then-People's Republic had been responsible for her father's assassination, but her tendency to take things personally might not be the best of ideas when dealing with other star nations. But if she was right, and Pritchard had had nothing to do with what had happened, then...
It was obvious that Shannon had come to the same conclusion. The way she suddenly growled, "Duchess Harrington, I request permission to return to Haven so I can strangle that scumbag Arnold Giancola with my bare hands. I don't care if I have to do it in the middle of a session of Congress, but that bastard single-handedly restarted the war between our nations," was something of an unsubtle hint.
"Sure," Honor agreed, "but we're going to Manticore first, so you can tell Elizabeth and Willie Alexander what you just told me." Shannon paled at the thought of meeting royalty, especially under these circumstances. "And then I'll take you to Haven myself so you can strangle Giancola." She paused before adding, "Want me to help?"
Of course, there was a little more to it than that. Surviving engineers had to check the Invictus' structural integrity, making sure that it would survive translations to the various hyper bands and the transit through the wormhole junction terminus at Trevor's Star. Their answer was a grudging 'yes', provided they went no higher than the delta bands. Additionally, the brief battle had destroyed enough beta nodes - but no alpha nodes, fortunately - that the Invictus' maximum acceleration was now somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred and fifty gravities.
So, the trip to the system's hyper limit took a few more hours than it normally would have, and it was just as the Warshawski sails were being powered up that it happened.
Strictly speaking, the Manticore Wormhole Junction *wasn't* a true wormhole - or even a series of wormholes - but rather, a region in space where hyper space bled through into normal space through a number of ruptures leading into the most powerful grav waves known to man.
This *was* a true wormhole, and the incoming task force had missed it by nearly a full light-minute, but the Invictus didn't - and it also managed to find an approach vector that was almost, but not quite, perfectly accurate, which was another problem in and of itself, since wormholes are chinks in the universe, gaps in the fabric of space-time. Hit one wrong, and it's impossible to guess *where*, not to mention *when* you'll end up.
The Invictus vanished from the universe.
"What the...?"
Vice Admiral of the Red Dame Alice Truman looked up from the damage control reports she was reading when she heard the sensor officer's surprised mutter. "What is it, Commander?" she asked moving to her side.
"Well, Ma'am - it's the Invictus," she replied. "It just vanished from my displays."
"Translated into hyper?" Alice asked, more out of hope than anything else.
"No, Ma'am," the sensor officer replied, shaking her head. "It's hard to tell from this distance, but it seems her nodes weren't fully powered up, and her sails hadn't been properly deployed yet." She adjusted her display, and the data reversed itself until the blip marked 'INVTS' reappeared, and replayed the last few seconds. The Invictus trundled towards the hyper limit at just under a quarter of light-speed and, just after leaving the shaded area that marked the system's hyper limit... vanished. "As you can see, Ma'am," the sensor officer continued, "there was no hyper footprint."
The two women exchanged glances. "What the hell just happened?" Alice asked in confusion.
The Invictus returned to the universe - well, *a* universe, anyway.
This is a brief sentence, and fully fails to provide any sort of detail as to what happened over the next ten to fifteen minutes. Later, *much*later, when things had calmed down somewhat, the survivors attempted to construct some sort of timeline for the events immediately following the Invictus' reversion into n-space.
It was an effort that was never going to be very successful for one simple reason:
There weren't very many survivors...
Honor fought down the sudden rush of nausea, and heard the strangled coughing noises that indicated that at least one other person had lost the struggle. She was no stranger to the nausea and general discomfort that inevitably accompanied all but the most gentle translations from the alpha band of hyperspace back to normal space, but what had just happened had felt more like a wormhole transit, which begged the question of how they had missed it on the way in-system and, perhaps more importantly, where they were now.
Unknown to Honor, what had happened was this: by entering the wormhole on a vector that was *almost*, but not quite, precisely correct, some of its more esoteric properties had been called into effect. The fact that the Invictus' Warshawski sails had been milliseconds from activating has simply assured this. Instead of simply being transported to the other end of the wormhole, the Invictus was unceremoniously dumped into another reality... or universe, or dimension.
Naturally, it was different from the one they'd left behind. Just as evolution is nature's way of exploring the phase-space of life, the multiverse is the exploration of all possible - and a few that would be considered impossible - universal configurations. In natural selection, the genome is what separates one species from another, while the thing that changes from universe to universe is a series of values called the 'fundamental constant', which defines the very basis of reality for a particular universe. Not all of them are nice. Some have ceased to exist. Some never got to the point where life could exists. Most of the universes where life *does* exist, however, have a number of things in common, which is only to be expected, since the requirements for life tend to remain fairly constant.
That being said, though, the universe in which the Invictus found itself wasn't all *that* different in ways that were easily noticeable - most of the differences existed at the sub-atomic level - except for two rather important respects. The first was a slight change in the fundamental constant. Of course, over the course of fifteen billion years, it was enough of a change to shift the Invictus' position by just over two thousand years in time and several hundred light-years in space. Minor stuff, really, when you look at the Big Picture.
The second difference was that this particular universe had a abnormally high number of inter-dimensional connections - the cosmological equivalent of the housing development that has easy access to every major transportation route in the area. Some of the dimensions these connections linked to this universe were hostile in the extreme, barely able to support life, which stamped its own set of influences on the life that *did* manage to exist. Basically, it meant that pretty much of all said life-forms were extremely hostile themselves, and determined to escape to more hospitable environments by any means necessary. Their actions gave rise to legends of vampires and other demons, which were true in every major respect, even if belief in them had all but vanished.
Even *if* Honor had known all this, it would have been of only secondary concern at that precise moment in time, since she had a number of more pressing concerns. First and foremost at the moment were the impeller nodes.
Able to take the output from the Invictus' fusion reactors and transform them into the stressed gravity bands that provided propulsion, the reverse was also true. In other words, under the right - or *wrong*circumstances - they could take a source of gravitic energy and convert it into something that could be used by the ship's more conventional systems. In a normal situation, this was nothing but a good thing, as a ship in hyperspace could use its Warshawski sails to provide power without placing any load on the reactors; a considerable saving in bunkerage requirements. However, in *this* situation, that ability became a two-edged sword, since the nodes had just encountered a gravitic source about a thousand times more powerful than even the wildest expectations of the most radical hyper physicist, with inevitable results.
Before each and every node was vaporised by the incredible power surge, they managed to pass on about a quarter of the induced load into the ship's power circuits. The results were as devastating as they were predictable.
Delicate molecular circuitry was ravaged, circuit breakers, surge suppressors and power sumps were overwhelmed, the inertial compensator failed instantly - only the fact that the Invictus was at zero acceleration saved the crew from being laminated to the rear bulkheads of whatever compartments they were in - and, perhaps worst of all, the containment fields for all four of Invictus' fusion bottles started to fluctuate alarmingly.
Honor hadn't even *begun* to react to the situation when every single light, display panel and hologrpahic display on the bridge suddenly went blank. Some of the lights and displays came back on, driven by redundant back-up systems, but not many. Most of the internal communication links had also been melted into uselessness, but the backups for the most critical links - Bridge, Damage Control and Engineering - managed to stay active, since the backups were primitive optical fibre, which were more robust than the molycirc primary links.
One of the secondary displays at her stations flickered to life, repeating the status panel in Damage Control. It made for grim viewing, since four-fifths of the compartments were either the black of 'no information received', the red of 'serious damage', or the flashing red of 'critical failure imminent'. Most of the rest was the yellow of 'moderate damage', with only a few showing green.
Deciding that she needed more information than the repeater display could show, Honor activated the comlink. "Damage Control, Bridge."
"Damage Control," the slightly distorted voice replied.
"The information that's on my secondary display," Honor said. "How accurate is it?"
"Fairly accurate, Ma'am. Allowing for some loss in detail due to the difference in the size of the screens involved, you're seeing the same thing that I am."
"Loss of detail?" Honor knew from sometimes-painful experience that the small details could make all the difference.
"Well, Ma'am, I'm getting some strange readings from the superconducting capacitor rings - both fore and aft. In fact, I've only ever seen readings like this once before..." the DCO's voice trailed off.
"And that was?" Honor prompted when the silence started to stretch out.
"Oh, sorry, Ma'am. As I was saying, the only time I've seen readings like this before was in a worst-case scenario sim. If I recall correctly, both rings exploded, causing catastrophic damage to the ship about fifteen minutes later."
Honor went pale at the thought, and Nimitz reared back in his harness in reaction to the emotions suddenly flowing through her mind. "Well, in that case, I think abandoning ship would be a good idea."
At his post at the entrance to the bridge, unnoticed in the sudden flurry of activity, Andrew LaFollet nodded decisively and, activating his personal com, started issuing orders to the travel detachment of armsmen that, under Grayson law, *had* to accompany their Steadholder whenever she went off-planet. He didn't have to issue too many, since Simon Mattingly - his second-in-command, and recently transferred from Allison Harrington's security team - and himself had hand-picked each of the ten other armsmen from the fifty-strong Harrington Steadholder Guard, and they'd chosen only the best.
That taken care of, he returned to his on-duty stance and waited for what would inevitably come next. It didn't take long.
"Andrew."
"Yes, My Lady?"
"Can I assume that you've already ordered the rest of your team to assist in passing the word to abandon ship to those members of the crew that are currently out of communication?"
"You may, My Lady," he replied, knowing what was going to come next.
"Then why aren't you helping them?" Honor asked, raising one eyebrow.
"My Lady, Grayson law requires that -" Andrew started, but was interrupted - as he'd expected.
"I think I'm safe from assassins on the bridge of my own ship, Andrew," Honor told him in a dry voice. "And if the ship happens to explode while I'm still on it, I don't think there's a great deal you can do about it, correct?"
"Yes, My Lady," Andrew replied. "If you'll excuse me..." he added, turning towards the hatch, only to be stopped when Honor spoke up again.
"Are you feeling all right, Andrew?" she said with a small smile. "Normally, it takes longer to convince you."
"Quite all right, My Lady," Andrew replied with a matching smile. "But under these circumstances, it would probably be better if I simply assumed from the start that you'll out-stubborn me and concede with good grace at the start." With that said, he turned and left.
Beside her, Rafe was chuckling quietly. "And just what do you find so amusing, Rafe?"
"Oh, the fact that this time it only took you a few seconds to convince Andrew of something, rather than the usual time. Generally, it's quite interesting to watch when Sphinx stubbornness meets Grayson stubbornness."
"I'm glad that you can find *something* amusing in this situation, Rafe," Honor said dryly. "However, I think we should be leaving now."
"Of course, Ma'am. After you." Rafe started to suit actions to words, before speaking up again as something occurred to him. "Who's going to tell Scotty and Shannon, though?"
"I think Andrew's got that covered."
"Well, *that* shouldn't have happened," Scotty observed as his stomach churned. He'd been assigned as liaison officer to the Havenite prisoners of war and, as part of his duties had been spending a considerable amount of time in their company, ensuring that their treatment was as specified under the Deneb Accords - not that Admiral Harrington would even *consider* doing otherwise, but Scotty took his duties seriously -which included at least an hour a day spent conferring with Admiral Foraker, discussing any problems that might have cropped up, and anything that had the potential to become a problem.
"That wasn't like any entry to hyperspace that I've ever experienced," Shannon commented.
"No, that was more like a wormhole transit," Scotty agreed. "But, as far as we know, there isn't a junction in the area - apart from the Trevor's Star terminus, of course."
"Not as far as we know, either," Shannon agreed in turn. "Which means that the ship must have hit an uncharted junction." Both naval officers shuddered as a thought occurred to both of them at the same time. The entry vectors for a wormhole were *very* carefully calculated, and for a good reason.
Before the uncomfortable line of speculation could be continued, the admittance alert chimed, and seconds later, the door opened to reveal Simon Mattingly. "Sorry to intrude, Sir, Ma'am, but the Steadholder's ordered 'abandon ship', and the internal communication system's down." It was a measure of his agitation that the normally unflappable armsman used the Admiral's Grayson title, and a sure sign that the situation was *serious*. He turned to leave, but Scotty interrupted him.
"Do you know where the Admiral is headed?" Scotty asked, trying to remain as calm as possible.
"Boat Bay Two, Sir," Simon replied, before dashing off.
Scotty turned to Shannon. "I think it would be a good idea to go," he said dryly.
"I couldn't agree more," Shannon replied. "But I want to make sure that my people are being included in the evacuation, though."
Scotty thought for a moment. Chief Harkness would probably already be carrying out some sort of pre-flight check-list - although, under these circumstances, it would probably be somewhat abbreviated; 'ensure that engines are physically attached to the pinnace and that the fission pile is present and correctly functioning' would probably be the extent of it - which meant that his presence on the pinnace's flight deck probably wasn't strictly required right now. "Of course."
His message delivered, Simon's next stop was the small armoury used to store the armsman detachment's weapons. Rapidly tapping in the access code, he went straight for the small-arms rack and strapped on a harness laden with fletchette gun ammunition, and hesitated briefly before grabbing three more and throwing them on loosely over the first one and grabbing two fletchette guns, knowing that Major LaFollet would be too busy looking after the Steadholder to grab a weapon himself.
Slinging one across his back, he kept the other one in his hand. Not that he expected to have to use it, but ingrained habits died hard. In this case, it was the habit of an experienced infantry soldier to keep his weapon close to hand once it had been issued.
There was one more stop he had to make before he could join Major LaFollet and the Steadholder in Boat Bay Two.
Surgeon Captain Fritz Montoya had just completed post-op procedures when Simon burst into sickbay. He took in the weapons and ammunition the armsman was carrying with a raised eyebrow and a quizzical expression. "I trust there's a reason for this, Corporal."
"Sorry, Doc, but 'abandon ship's been ordered, and I've got to make sure you make it to safety," Simon replied.
Fritz paled at that brusquely delivered statement. He'd noticed the unusually strong hyperspace event, but had been too involved in trying to save the life of a Havenite officer to take much notice.
"Abandon ship?" he repeated incredulously. "In hyperspace?"
Simon shook his head. "We never *entered* h-space in the first place, Doc," he said bluntly. "No-one knows what happened, but best guess is that we hit a wormhole of some sort... and took serious damage in the process."
"But... my patients," Fritz stammered. He knew that, while some of the less seriously injured would probably be able to make it to the life pods, there weren't very many of them, and if the ship succumbed to its damage, *none* of the seriously injured would survive.
But he had a *duty* to them, dammit! He'd sworn an oath on the day he completed his training at Bassingford - with Surgeon Commander Alfred Harrington as one of his instructors - to heal the wounded, to provide them with the best medical care that he could. For nearly twenty years, he'd done that, even under fire and under conditions that would have appalled his fellow doctors.
And now he was expected to abandon them, to save his own life. The rational part of his brain understood the reasoning behind that line of thought, but the part of him that would always be a doctor recoiled from it. How could he be expected to do this?
Simon solved his dilemma in the most simple way possible - by grabbing his arm and dragging him towards Boat Bay Two. "Sorry, Sir," Simon said. "But we didn't have time for you to resolve your crisis. Hopefully, the Tester will understand."
Scotty and Shannon never made it to where the Havenite POWs were being accommodated. Instead, they ran into Honor, Rafe and the other bridge crew. "I see you obviously got the message," Honor said.
"Er, yes, Ma'am," Scotty replied. "In fact, we were just on our way to check up on the Havenite-"
"Don't worry about it, Scotty," Honor interrupted. "Andrew's already sent someone down to get them to life pods. I think your talents would be best utilised pre-flighting one of the pinnaces."
"Yes, Ma'am," Scotty said, knowing that there wasn't a great deal else he could have said.
When the newly-expanded group arrived in Boat Bay Two a couple of minutes later, they arrived to a scene of purposeful action, with an overlay of slight confusion. Everyone was going through the procedures for such an occasion, but were obviously wondering *why* the situation had arisen. They were going to make a fairly routine hop through hyperspace to Trevor's Star, followed by an equally routine junction transit back to Manticore, right? So why the emergency?
Honor saw this, but of somewhat more pressing concern at the moment was the fact that, out of all of the small craft in the bay, only two pinnaces weren't festooned with the red tags that meant 'out of service', although that probably *did* explain why there were only a few people present - everyone else had reported to the nearest life pod launching area. Looking around for someone to explain the situation, she saw the familiar sight of Chief Warrant Officer Sir Horace Harkness standing by the airstair of one of the pinnaces. "What's going on, Chief?" she asked, making her way over to him.
"Well, Ma'am, it seems that every other small craft was plugged into the ship's power systems when whatever it was hit, and what isn't fried is simply melted," Harkness replied. "I suppose we're lucky that none of the containment bottles let go."
Even though the latest generation of Manticoran small craft used fission piles instead of fusion bottles, which meant that containment failure wouldn't result in a catastrophic explosion, the result would still be pretty nasty.
Honor simply nodded, accepting the explanation. Harkness had been involved with the new small craft ever since their inception, and his experience made him one of the foremost experts on their operation. He hiked a thumb in the direction of the two Marine sergeants standing behind him and added, "These two have been helping me check out the two pinnaces that are still working. They're not too bad... for jarheads," he added in a slightly dismissive tone.
Instead of being offended, the Marines simply grinned.
Even before he masterminded the breakout from the Tepes, Harkness had been something of a legend within the Navy. The first reason had been the sheer number of times he had been promoted to Senior Chief Petty Officer before losing said rank, generally due to what he saw as officers unsympathetic to the need of fellow crew members' needs for a few 'luxury items' to make deployments just that little bit more comfortable. The fact that Harkness had made a tidy little income from these humanitarian endeavours was simply a bonus.
The second reason was that, in the past, he'd seemed incapable of passing a Marine uniform in a bar without trying to render the wearer unconscious - a habit which had also resulted in its fair share of demotions. These days, he limited his efforts to prove the Navy's superiority over Marines to the practice mats for one very simple reason; his wife, a Marine herself, frowned on such a practice.
With that in mind, Honor cast a measuring glance towards the two sergeants. One had the sort of build that would require an insane amount of working out with weights to achieve... in anyone else but a native of San Martin, that is. The inhabitants of that world, the heaviest-grav world settled during the Diaspora, were forced to live on high mountain plateaux by the fact that their planet's high gravity produced a lethal sea-level atmospheric pressure. Fortunately, San Martin's active geology had resulted in a lot of said plateaux for people to live on.
One of San Martin's other claims to fame was the legendary stubbornness of its people. Honor had always supposed that was a result of the environment in which they lived. After all, if you lived somewhere where simply moving around was twice the effort of virtually everywhere else, the sort of attitude that was required to stick it out was simple to transfer to just about everything else, as well. Their other claim to fame was a near-fanatical hatred for the People's Republic of Haven and all of its works - a hatred which had been transferred to the post-Committee of Public Safety Republic of Haven.
Given that Trevor's Star had been the last conquest of the then-People's Republic, it was easy to understand why such a hatred would exist. As a result, large numbers of San Martinos had enlisted in the armed forces of the only star nation they saw as being willing to stand up to Haven's rapacious appetite - Manticore - and more had enlisted since San Martin's voluntary annexation into the Star Kingdom. Judging by his age and rank, the sergeant had been one of those fortunate enough to escape either the invasion itself or the occupation, possibly even in the last refugee convoy through the Trevor's Star terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction that then-Commodore, now-President Jesus Ramirez had been thought to have been killed covering the escape of.
"Sergeant Juan Garcia reporting, Admiral," the sergeant said, coming to attention and saluting. Honor returned the salute and the sergeant returned to the attention position.
The other sergeant was obviously from Gryphon; he even had that subtle air of stubborn pride about him that indicated that he was from the Attica Mountains - the notorious Highlands, which produced some of the most inveterate duellists and vendettas in human space. They also had an intense contempt for hereditary aristocracy, which made their strong and unwavering support for the Crown something of a mystery... until it was taken into account that ever since Gryphon was opened for settlement, the Crown had supported the planet's yeomanry against the depredations of the local aristocracy. Which, in turn, explained why half of Gryphon's aristocrats were members in good standing of the Conservative Association. The percentage would be higher, but the *true* Gryphon conservative thought the Association was far too namby-pamby and liberal.
Of course, the current Manticoran monarch could be just as stubborn as any Highlander. It was often said that Elizabeth was easily capable to holding a grudge until it died of old age, then having it stuffed and mounted. Having spent an increasing amount of time in Elizabeth's company of late, Honor could attest that, if anything, that statement understated things considerably.
"Sergeant Michael Anderson reporting, Admiral," he said, copying Garcia's actions.
"At ease, sergeants," Honor told them, before return her attention to Harkness. "Is the pinnace ready to go, Chief?" she asked.
Harkness nodded. "Yes, Ma'am," he replied. "Both of them are."
Honor hesitated. As much as she wanted to wait to see if anybody else showed up, she knew that it would do nobody any good - least of all her - if she stayed until the ship exploded. She was dragged from her thoughts by a brief sting in her ear. It was easy to work out who the culprit was, especially when she felt the exasperated affection through her link with Nimitz. "I know, Stinker," she told him, reaching up to rub his head between his ears. Well, then," she continued, turning back to Harkness, "in that case, let's be -"
The entrance of the docking bay opened, and Andrew and Simon hustled through. Andrew was burdened down with some of Honor's possessions, including the Harrington Sword slung across his back and the flat case which held the Harrington Key. In his arms was Sylvester, who'd obviously been too apathetic to resist Andrew picking him up.
Simon was festooned with weapons and ammunition, and Honor had to restrain a sigh at the guard-dog mentality that caused him to load up on weapons before seeing to his own safety. It was depressingly easy to restrain that sigh, though, for an equally depressing reason; enough people had tried to kill her - apart from in battle, that is - for it to be necessary. She next had to restrain a small smile as Simon dragged a protesting Fritz Montoya through the doors.
She could understand the reasons behind Fritz's protests, since the personality that made him such an effective doctor also meant that he would be reluctant - at best - to leave his patients. Simon had obviously resolved any potential confrontation by simply dragging Fritz along with him.
On seeing Honor, Fritz shook off Simon's hand and stalked over, his expression and emotions betraying his extreme unhappiness. "Is it your fault that I was dragged away from my patients?" he demanded as Simon handed a fletchette gun and two ammunition harnesses to Andrew.
"No," Honor replied, shaking her head. "But now that you're here, you might as well get on one of the pinnaces."
Fritz drew himself up, probably to start blustering, but obviously decided against it, and his shoulder slumped in an attitude of defeat. "I really don't have much choice, do I?"
"No," Honor agreed sadly as she led him up the airstair. "I'm afraid not."
Having claimed the co-pilot's chair by virtue of her rank and previous piloting experience, Honor cast an eye back towards the passenger compartment. Directly behind her, having claimed the flight engineer's position, was Harkness, who was adjusting some of the controls. Although the pinnace had been checked and declared flight-worthy, he claimed to have doubts about some of the systems, particularly the counter-grav.
Honor was in two minds about that pronouncement. The counter-grav was crucial to the ability of the pinnace to land, after all, and as such, any problems with that system were treated very seriously. On the other hand, nothing was showing up on the instruments, despite the near-continuous diagnostic tests that both Harkness and she were running.
Deciding to leave that potential problem in Harkness' capable hands for now, she glanced back at the passenger compartment. Andrew and Simon had claimed the front row of seats, their unhappiness at being unable to properly stand post clearly evident. Between them, propped up in a seat, was the Harrington Sword, and in another seat, Sylvester was curled up, with Nimitz offering what support he could.
Behind them, the pinnace was much less than half-full, as the boarding process had become somewhat confused, with most of the people in the boat bay ending up on the other pinnace. In the end, only a dozen people had ended up boarding a craft with room for four times that number - and that was counting the two treecats.
As Scotty concentrated on flying the pinnace, Honor turned one of the visual sensors back towards the Invictus. At its maximum acceleration of nearly seven hundred gravities, the pinnace had started to open up a respectable distance from the severely damaged superdreadnought, but even from this distance, the extent of the damage was clearly visible, and Honor had to wonder if the universe was out to get her; virtually every ship she'd commanded, or had had assigned to her as a squadron or task force flagship, had ended up suffering severe battle damage. And now, her first Fleet flagship had joined that list.
Despite her instincts telling her otherwise, she hoped that the Invictus wouldn't end up being destroyed, although with most of the internal systems melted to slag, the ship would probably end up being scrapped, anyway-
The end, when it came, was swift and brutal, and completely without warning.
The Invictus heaved and broke into three segments as the superconducting capacitor rings finally gave out under the immense strain they had been subjected to. Essentially massive batteries, they stored power for the energy weapons - lasers and grasers - that provided the close-range punch for any warship, and also helped ease the drain of the Warshawski generators on the fusion plants. Since the capacitor rings were directly connected to the fusion plants, when they overloaded, they sent a massive surge along what was probably the only intact molycirc system on the ship, with predictable results.
All four of the Invictus' fusion reactors suffered from catastrophic decontainment in virtually the same instant. In plain language, that meant they blew up - spectacularly, sending a wave-front of plasma expanding outwards at relativistic - a significant fraction of the speed of light - velocities, swallowing up the shoal of launched life pods before the occupants had time to realise what had happened.
Acting with the speed that her genetically-engineered reflexes allowed, Honor slapped the switches that activated the pinnace's sternwall, causing Scotty to curse briefly as the acceleration dropped to zero, but he soon fell silent as the realisation of what had just happened sank in.
The crew of the other pinnace wasn't so lucky, and the plasma front, attenuated by the distance the two small craft had managed to travel before the Invictus' spectacular destruction, ripped into the wide-open kilt of its wedge.
Although attenuated, the plasma was still hot enough, and moving fast enough, that the pinnace vanished in a puff of vapour made up of the alloys that it was constructed from, along with its passengers and crew.
Honor slumped in her chair, tears trickling down her cheeks, as the pinnace bucked from the energy slamming into its sternwall. Although well above the tolerances it was designed for, the sternwall absorbed enough of the energy that, instead of being instantly destroyed, the damage was limited to the after impeller ring losing half of its nodes. Beside her, with the immediate crisis passed, Scotty sat bolt upright in his chair, staring blankly ahead as the implications of what had just happened sank in. In a pair of heartbeats, thousands of people had died, and the only survivors of the crews of *two* superdreadnoughts were on this pinnace.
From the passenger compartment, there was a shocked silence, broken only by Nimitz's heart-rending keening, fuelled by grief and prompted by the wave of emotion that hammered at him through his empathic sense.
The stately manor house perched majestically among the carefully maintained greenery of its grounds, somehow managing to blend in perfectly with its surroundings as if it had been created at the same time as them. Even by the standards of the country, where stately manor houses were a common sight in the rural areas, this would have drawn attention. More than a few had been converted to cosy bed-and-breakfast tourist accommodation, but this particular manor house resisted that trend, which was the cause of some idle discussion in the nearby village that provided it food, and where some of the staff could be seen at the local pub of an evening, indulging in a few relaxing ales.
Careful questioning by the locals had drawn only a few facts, one of them being that the manor dated back to the Norman Conquest, and had remained the property of one family in all that time. What was *not*mentioned, however, was that the manor house had *not* been built by a member of the Norman nobility to oversee land granted to him by William the Conqueror. In fact, the manor house had been built under far more secretive circumstances, by a group relocating from a strife-torn continent in the hope that the newly-conquered land would prove to be a more secure base for their operations.
In that, the Council of Watchers would be proven to be both right *and*wrong. By and large, they had remained relatively untouched by the turmoil that would sweep the nation on a semi-regular basis, although a brief skirmish between Royalist and Parliamentarian troops had been fought in the grounds as the Roundheads hunted down the last remnants of the Cavalier army fleeing the aftermath of Marsden Moor, and once the halls and rooms of the manor house itself had rang to the sounds of combat during an attempted coup d'etat.
But, during all that time, the Council had kept up its sole charge - the training and guidance of the Slayer, and the search for those who would, one day, replace the current Slayer. Even in a nation which - usually - prided itself on maintaining their traditions, this would be considered an impressive effort... if anyone had found out about it, of course. The Council maintained its privacy through a series of carefully maintained contacts in both the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of Great Britain.
On more than one occasion in the last millennium, rumours of the Council's existence had almost come to the attention of the general populace, requiring the use of those carefully maintained contacts. Not to quash the rumours, of course; that would be the next best thing to confirming them. Instead the rumours had been carefully guided and nudged into paths leading away from the Council, so subtly that their existence remained a secret outside of those people whom the Council chose to confide their existence in.
Another thing not revealed about the manor house was its true extent. Although no modifications had been made to its exterior since the late nineteenth century, a series of chambers had been dug underneath the manor house, most being stringently climate-controlled rooms used to store documents dating back to the formation of the Council, nearly three thousand years ago, and beyond. Other rooms contained artefacts that had been acquired one way or another, and that were considered too dangerous to allow to remain in general circulation, but also too dangerous to simply destroy. Still more rooms contained more modern equipment, intended for use by the Council's *other*... departments.
All of this, however, went unnoticed by either the local villagers or the occasional tourist who paused to admire the blend of architecture styles and take a few photographs before continuing on their way.
So when the manor house suddenly exploded one fine autumn night, it came as a complete shock to everyone in the area including, very briefly, the occupants. The subsequent investigation turned up nothing that hinted at who was responsible. Discreet contacts with what was left of the IRA resulted in denials so vehement that the New Scotland Yard investigators were forced to come to the conclusion that they did, indeed, have nothing to do with it. More recent terrorist threats were considered and discarded for lack of motive in targeting that particular building.
The case would be pursued, on and off, for a number of years, but no definitive answer would ever be forthcoming.
The young woman wiped the blood from the short sword she carried before returning it to its scabbard. It was an almost-reflex action, one bred into her during almost two years of training, which meant that she didn't have to watch what she was doing.
She surveyed the handful of bodies scattered on the front lawn of the house. <Who are they? Why did they attack us? And how did they manage to fight as well as they did with their eyes and mouth sewn shut?>
Just then, her gaze fell upon the slumped figure nailed to one of the trees by the simple expedient of a sword through the torso. Letting out a shocked gasp, she ran over to the man who'd been not just her trainer, but also acted as a father ever since the tragic death of her parents in a car accident.
"Mister Argus!" she exclaimed. "Don't die... please!"
Jeffery Argus opened his eyes and coughed weakly. Even in the weak half-light of early evening, the blood that started trickling from his mouth was obvious. "I'm not dead yet," he said softly. "But I probably will be soon."
"No!" the young woman protested. "You *can't* die! There's so much I need to learn!"
"Trust me, it's not an idea I'm too happy with either," Jeffery said dryly. "But it's inevitable at this point, and it will probably be my last lesson for you - that there are some things you just can't stop."
As the young woman started sobbing softly, he managed to smile gently.
"If you receive the full measure of your gift - and if God is kind you won't; not because I don't believe you will be capable of carrying out the duty that comes with the gift, but because in order for you to receive it, some other young woman has to die - there will be times when, no matter how strong you become, when you cannot save everybody.
"If that ever happens, you will most probably start to doubt yourself. But know this, Amanda Thomson; every night that you save even *one*human life is a victory to be cherished." Jeffery coughed again, a pain-filled sound that caused more blood to start trickling from his mouth.
"I couldn't even do *that* tonight!" Amanda wailed, tears starting to flow freely.
"You *did* manage to save a life tonight," Jeffery disagreed. "Yours. You were the main target for these creatures. I merely got in their way. The fact that you managed to survive speaks well of your potential."
Amanda felt even more guilty. "But I..."
"But me no buts, young lady," Jeffery interrupted. "There's one more thing I have to tell you," he continued, his voice growing weaker as more of his blood flowed from his wounds. "Go to Sunnydale. Go to the Slayer and her Watcher. Buffy Summers and Rupert Giles; they will know what to do. And let me add that is has been an honour and a pleasure being your Wat...cher..."
It took a moment for Amanda to realise that Jeffery Argus had died, and when it finally sank in, she dropped to her knees beside the tree that propped up his body, her shoulders shaking as she gave in to her emotions.
For some time, she simply cried as she mourned.
"I love you, Dad," she whispered, saying the words that she'd often wanted to, but had never had the courage to say. But somehow, he'd known that she felt that way; she was certain of it. She just wished that she'd been able to say it while hugging him, to hear him say, "I love you, too," while returning the hug.
Wiping away the tears, she rose unsteadily to her feet. If she was going to survive, she would have to leave straight away. First of all, she'd probably need a couple of changes of clothes, since it would take a few days to make the cross-country trek. There was a stash of money for emergencies - this definitely qualified as such - which would have to stretch to transport, accommodation and food during the trip.
Amanda Thomson, potential Vampire Slayer, headed into the house to pack and make preparations for what would be the longest trip of her life, at the ripe old age of fourteen years and eight months.
Xander Harris sat on the back porch of his house, sipping a soft drink and looking at the stars. Under normal circumstances - he snorted gently at his definition of 'normal'; one, he suspected, that would be radically different from most peoples' - he would have been patrolling Sunnydale's many cemeteries with Buffy, doing his bit to ensure that the world kept running as normal... well, his bit of it, anyway.
The hubris in that thought was good for another snort.
<As if I could ever save the world by myself,> he thought as he took another sip of his drink. <But then again, I *did* manage to talk Willow out of destroying the world a few months ago, and then there was that time with Jack O'Toole in the school boiler room...>
But mostly he thought about people, and how they changed.
First up, there was Buffy. Apparently, before she moved from Los Angeles, she was pretty much the stereotypical high-school cheerleader. That was before she became a Vampire Slayer, and before she'd slept with not one, but two vampires, much to his annoyance. He'd kept his silence - mostly - because it was her life to live, but sometimes it had been a real struggle. That time at Spike's crypt last year was one occasion that stood out in particular.
<Naked push-ups, my ass,> he thought contemptuously. <Just how *stupid*do they think I am? It was obvious that he was having sex with Buffy. And you'd think he'd have at least the common courtesy to *stop* while I was trying to talk to him!>
There were some other issues involved in the relationship that bothered him - namely Spike's attempted rape of Buffy. But whenever he tried to discuss it, she brushed him off with a "He didn't have his soul then. But he does now," as if that suddenly made him a good guy. Obviously, she didn't watch the news much.
There was Willow, his oldest friend. His oldest *surviving* friend, he corrected himself. Originally a shy computer geek, over the years, she'd become first an increasingly-powerful witch, then she'd become a lesbian, and most recently, she'd become someone who, in the grip of grief and rage over the death of her lover, had attempted to destroy the world with the magic she'd stolen from Giles. Luckily, he'd managed to talk her out of it, but not without a price, he reflected as he absently rubbed his shirt over his chest. More specifically, over his chest where the scars left by Willow's magical attacks were.
And him? The former high-school outcast who'd been the first to learn of Buffy's calling and offer his services to help had also changed a lot over the years. He'd become more confident, more assured, for a start. And instead of living in his parents' basement - and getting charged rent for it - he now had his own house, paid for by his foreman's job with a local construction company.
More than that, his feelings for Buffy had changed, as well. First had been the hormone-soaked crush, which had become something more powerful. But of late, the relationship had started to fray, and he wasn't certain why. The reason that he could even *tell* the relationship was starting to fray was probably the biggest change in him of all, and it probably had something to do with the magic Willow had hit him with during her bout of 'channelling the Emperor,' when he'd got in between her and the temple she was using her magic to raise.
He could *sense* people's emotions.
It was as simple as that. For the first few days, he'd wondered if it was anything like the time that Buffy had become a mind-reader, but decided against it - she'd been able to hear actual thoughts, whereas he could only get a general feeling for emotions. It had also been interesting to finally know what was actually going through his friends' minds. Giles' emotions had been tightly focused, as he concentrated on his Watcher duties. Buffy's mind had been something of a tangled mess, but one of the two emotions he'd been able to pick up on clearly had been that it was entirely possible that she actually *loved* Spike, as difficult as that might seem to believe. The other seemed to be a powerful resentment aimed at both Willow and himself. If he had to guess, it was probably something to do with the way they'd resurrected her. But that was insane... wasn't it?
Unless Willow had made a mistake, and Buffy *hadn't* been rescued from Hell, after all.
Willow's emotions were fairly easy to sort out. Guilt, and lots of it, from the way she'd come so close to destroying the world, and the way she'd attacked her oldest friend. Ever since that fateful day on Kingman's Bluff, he'd talked to her regularly, trying to break through that guilt. So far, he hadn't met with much success, but he was determined to keep on trying.
The other thing that had come as a result of stepping into Willow's magic was that he seemed to be able to see into the future. Not to the extent of, say, knowing next weekend's winning lottery numbers, but a few seconds. Not that that was completely useless, however, since it had enabled him to dodge a vampire's attack on more than one occasion, along with being able to precisely place an arrow or a stake.
Not that any of the others had any idea of why he was now able to do that. They simply chalked it up to the fact that his skills had grown with experience and, to an extent, that was true. But not all of it.
He wondered if he should tell them, but it was how they might react that made him reconsider every time. Giles probably wouldn't overreact, but it was Willow's and, especially, Buffy's reaction that was the prime concern.
Stifling a yawn, he suddenly realised how late it had gotten. Draining the last of the soft drink, he crumpled the can and tossed it into the recycling bin. As he turned to go into his house, he glanced at the sky one last time, and saw a new pinprick of light where he was fairly sure one hadn't been before. In case it was a shooting star, he made a wish... but silently.
After all, you never knew when there was a vengeance demon lurking around.