In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (38 page)

“It’s not huge,” Honor told him. “Only a bit over seven hundred. But we’ve got fifty specials for a pleasure resort. They need to be kept segregated from the others, and they’re shipping under pretty high trank levels, so somebody will need to keep an eye on the med levels, too.”

“Understood. We can handle all that. I make your turnover in fifty-nine minutes, and arrival here at the station in about another hour and a half.”

“That matches our numbers.” Honor nodded. “If it’s all right with you, though, we’ll lighter them across instead of actually docking. We’re running behind schedule, and I’d rather not take the time to rig personnel tubes.”

“Not a problem from our end,” Watanabe assured her. “Do you have enough shuttles, or do we need to send some out to help?”

“We’re covered, I think, but thanks. We’ve already got them pretty well tranked on happy gas; by the time we start packing them into the shuttles, they’ll be like sleepy little mice.”

Honor allowed herself a nasty smile, and Watanabe smirked back at her.

“Understood,” he said. “We’ll see you then, Captain.”

*
   
*
   
*

“What a pain in the ass,” Emmet Lawson growled as he grimaced at his executive officer.
 

Lawson, who practically never thought of himself as Ezzo Damasco these days, was built on the small side. He had a wiry, weasel-like quickness, black hair, a dark complexion, and dark brown eyes which looked as if they’d died years ago. He and his XO made an interesting contrast, since Kgell Rønningen was twenty centimeters taller than him, with fair hair, blue eyes, a powerful physique, and an air of gentle good humor.

That seeming good humor was deceptive, however. Like Lawson, Rønningen couldn’t have begun to count how many men and women he’d killed over the last two or three decades. As far as he knew, there weren’t any actual interstellar murder warrants out for him…which there certainly were for the man who’d been born Ezzo Damasco back on Old Earth herself sixty T-years before. On the other hand, most of
his
murders had occurred in deep space, far from any officious, watching eyes.

“Well,” he said now, shrugging massive shoulders, “it’s not really a surprise, is it?”

“I just don’t like all this Mickey Mouse bullshit,” Lawson grumbled. “Bastards act like they’re frigging admirals and I’m some goddammed brand-new ensign!”

Rønningen only grunted. Actually, he was beginning to have his doubts about Lawson. They’d only gotten off with their skins intact last time around by a fluke, as far as Rønningen could see, and that hadn’t been the first time Lawson had walked into something. The number of times they could do that and walk
away
again had to be finite. Besides, the whole point in throwing in with the people here in Casimir in the first place had been to ensure a safe place to dispose of their loot and a safe haven for routine maintenance and R&R, and unlike Lawson, Rønningen had no problem pulling his weight in the cooperative effort to
keep
it a safe place.

And, he reflected (not for the first time), it wasn’t unusual for a pirate vessel’s executive officer to suddenly find himself its
commanding
officer following the mysterious disappearance of the previous CO. Especially when the rest of the ship’s officers agreed with the XO in question that the previous captain’s…questionable decisions had become a liability.

“All right!” Lawson waved one hand. “Tell them we’ve received their damned message and we’re keeping an eye on things.”

“And should I go ahead and bring the weapons up?” Rønningen, who doubled as the ship’s tactical officer, inquired.

“Go ahead,” Lawson said resignedly.

*
   
*
   
*

“I’ve got something you should take a look at, Skipper,” Lieutenant Hutchinson said, and Honor turned her command chair to face the tactical section.

“What is it, Fred?”

“We’re getting good telemetry back from the recon drones,”
Hawkwing
’s tac officer said. “Most of it’s not too surprising—the Ballroom guys did a good job digging out the original stats and authorization order for the platform’s weapons outfit, and it doesn’t look like there’ ve been too many changes from the file copies. But their intel about these people’s keeping a ship at readiness looks to have been right on the money, too.”

Honor nodded patiently. She’d noticed the icon of the single ship standing fifteen hundred kilometers clear of the platform with her impeller nodes online over a quarter-hour ago.

“Well, Skipper, the interesting thing about it is that we
know
that ship.”

“We do?” Honor’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes, Ma’am. According to her transponder, that’s the Andermani-registry ship
Christiane Kirsch,
but she’s got all her active sensors online. We’re getting good, solid reads off of them, and according to CIC’s records, her
emissions signature
belongs to our old friend
Evita
.”

Honor suppressed the almost automatic reflex of asking Hutchinson if he was sure about that. Frederick Hutchinson was very young—only about four T-years older than Everett Janacek—but he’d been
Hawkwing
’s tactical officer for over ten T-months now. He’d demonstrated his competence over those months, and he wouldn’t have said what he’d just said if he hadn’t double and triple-checked CIC’s evaluation first.

That was her first thought. Her second was considerably more bloodthirsty.

“Well,” she said aloud, “I suppose we might consider her presence here additional evidence of Governor Charnowska’s involvement. If we had naturally suspicious minds, of course.” She smiled thinly. “I’m confident the governor could come up with all sorts of perfectly reasonable explanations for how it all could have happened without her knowledge.”

“I’m sure she could, Ma’am,” Hutchinson replied with a treecatlike smile.

“On the other hand, it does give us a certain additional…freedom of action,” Honor continued. Her tone was almost whimsical, but her almond eyes were as cold as the vacuum outside
Hawkwing
’s hull. “Good work, Guns. I think we’ll go with Polka One.”

“Polka One, aye, Ma’am,” Hutchinson acknowledged, and his smile turned even more predatory as he added, “It works for me, Skip.”

*
   
*
   
*

“I thought you said
thirty
minutes,” Julian Watanabe observed as Edytá Sokolowska finally arrived on the command deck.

“I did.” She gave him the smile of a temporarily—very temporarily—satisfied predator. “But I’m discovering that with the proper…incentive his endurance can be pretty amazing.”

Watanabe returned her smile. Both of them had come into Manpower’s employ for primarily financial reasons, but there’d been other attractions, as well. Attractions which had a lot to do with why—before their Manpower days, at least—both of them had made it a point to avoid professions which would have required basic psych evaluations.
 

Watanabe had been reprimanded twice for “excessive wastage of product,” which took some doing, given Manpower’s usual attitudes. It hadn’t come close to disqualifying him from sensitive positions—in fact, Manpower actually preferred people like him in a lot of ways; their appetites gave their employers an extra handle on them—but his pay had been docked for the full price of the slaves—
all
the slaves—on both occasions.

Sokolowska knew all about those reprimands, and she couldn’t have cared less, although her own tastes ran to rather more…subtle forms of entertainment. Watanabe was reputed to be inventive, but he used his toys up quickly. Sokolowska, on the other hand, had a lot more of the sharp-clawed cat in her makeup, including the need to savor her play for as long as she could. Physical cruelty was all very well, and no doubt satisfying in its own way, but it palled too quickly for her taste. She found it much more delicious to compel her playthings—male or female—to lavish pleasure upon her. Fear of pain could do that, and inflicting it as she went along added a certain savor of its own to the moment, but she found
psychological
terror an even more satisfying vintage. Which actually made her and Watanabe partners upon occasion. After all, what could drive a man to thoroughly satisfy her libido better than the knowledge that if he failed—if she should happen to be…dissatisfied with his efforts in any slightest way—his preadolescent son or daughter would be sent to entertain Watanabe?

She brushed that pleasurable thought aside and turned her attention to the master display.

The information displayed above
Rapunzel
’s icon showed the ship was still about ten minutes from actual rendezvous with the depot. Her velocity was down to 1,176 KPS, and the range was barely 353,000 kilometers.

“Anything more from them about those fifty specials?”

“No.” Watanabe shook his head, then cocked it to one side. “It does sound interesting, though, doesn’t it?”

“Don’t even think about it, Julian.” She turned to give him a stern glance. “Management will put up with a lot, but if they say it’s so important to keep these separated from the rest, messing with them is a good way to end up with something a lot worse than burned fingers.”

“Oh, I know,” he acknowledged with a slightly wistful expression. “Still, it does give one to think.”

“As long as thinking is all you’re doing.” She shook her head. “It’s not like you don’t have plenty to pick and choose from right here on the depot.”

He nodded, and Sokolowska turned back to the display, satisfied—or at least mostly so—that he really would keep his hands to himself. Still, she couldn’t pretend she was
positive
he would, and the front office would probably tolerate it even if he did…slip a little.

Why he can’t just be content with the ones that aren’t off-limits is beyond me,
she reflected.
Maybe that’s part of the attraction for him? The fact that he’s flirting with danger himself when he crosses the line?

Whatever it was, she wasn’t even tempted to emulate him. She’d just stick to the low-cost merchandise. Or, even better, do her hunting on the side. Most of the platform’s “official” personnel were family men and women, which made them much better suited to her own type of play. And this
was
the perfect opportunity to indulge herself with the sort of toys which were usually harder to “disappear” than mere slaves.

After all, no depot could be left permanently in place, especially not when it was serving so many ends at once. Sooner or later, even as sweet a setup as they had here, with Charnowska and Obermeyer both on the pad, had to come to an end at last. And when the time finally came for Manpower to fold its tent here in Casimir and move on, they wouldn’t be leaving any witnesses behind.

*
   
*
   
*

“Coming up on ninety seconds, Skipper,” Fred Hutchinson announced. The fair-haired tactical officer’s blue eyes were narrow, focused on his own displays, and Honor nodded.

“Thank you, Guns.” Her voice was even calmer than usual, but all of her officers had been with her long enough to know what that meant. “Stand by for separation, Helm.”

“Standing by for separation, aye,” Aloysius O’Neal responded from where he stood with one hand on the seated helmsman’s shoulder and his own eyes on the maneuvering display.

The sailing master’s taut voice was noticeably less calm than hers, but its tension was that of concentration, not fear, and Honor glanced at the single icon floating well clear of the platform on the main tactical plot. Under the strict letter of interstellar law, her next preparatory order should be to Florence Boyd, she reflected. Instead, she turned back to the com display by her knee.

“Captain Samson?”

“Standing by for separation,” Samson X confirmed over the com. He sounded quite a bit more nervous than O’Neal did, she noticed. Well, considering what even a slight helm error on
Hawkwing
’s part would do to his ship, he had a right to be nervous.

“We will execute separation on my mark,” she continued. “Tactical, confirm Polka One.”

“Polka One set and locked, Captain,” Hutchinson said formally.

“Very well then, people,” Honor said, watching the digital display tick down the handful of seconds. “Let’s be about it.”

There was complete silence on the destroyer’s bridge for another seven seconds. Then—

“Execute separation!”

*
   
*
   
*

One moment, everything was perfectly normal aboard Casimir Depot, proceeding exactly according to plan.
Rapunzel
was less than eight thousand kilometers out, down to barely a hundred seventy-six kilometers per second, ninety seconds from her zero-zero rendezvous with the platform.

The next moment, things changed…drastically.

*
   
*
   
*

It took a moment for Kgell Rønningen to realize what was happening. It wasn’t really his fault—Honor Harrington and her allies had gone to great lengths to ensure that no one would realize what was happening until it was too late. It had never occurred to anyone in Casimir that the “slave ship” plodding so sedately towards the depot might have a royal Manticoran warship tractored limpetlike to its side. That its approach vector might have been carefully chosen to keep that ship in its shadow, hidden from any of its enemies’ sensors even after the warship in question broke skin contact. That HMS
Hawkwing
might have carefully positioned herself one hundred kilometers clear of
Reprisal,
still hidden between the roof and floor of the big freighter’s impeller wedge, but far enough out to clear the threat perimeter of her own wedge when the time came.

And it had come
now
.

*
   
*
   
*

“Kill the wedge!” Samson X barked, and his engineer hit the master switch.

Reprisal
’s wedge disappeared instantly, and a fraction of a second later,
Hawkwing
’s slammed up. The destroyer had cut her tractor connection to the freighter the instant Honor gave the separation order; now she rolled and went to her maximum acceleration—5.14 KPS
²
—and raced clear of her enormous companion, even as
Reprisal
rolled much more slowly on gyros and reaction thrusters alone.