In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (42 page)

Honor leaned back in her command chair, elbows on its armrests, fingers steepled together in front of her, and her mind raced.
Feliksá
was the last thing she would have expected to see here in Casimir. Given the fact that Commodore Teschendorff was assigned to Hillman, his flagship was at least twenty light-years outside his jurisdiction, and intruding into someone else’s private preserve without an invitation simply wasn’t done in the Confederacy Navy.

“How long for her to reach us?” she asked.

“She only brought about nine hundred KPS across the wall with her, Ma’am.” Lieutenant JG Wallace Markham, Aniella Matsakis’s assistant astrogator, had the watch. The brown-haired, hazel-eyed Markham was from Gryphon, with a burr that almost matched Aloysius O’Neal’s, and he was only a couple of years older than Everett Janacek. “She’s accelerating at roughly two-point-niner KPS squared, so assuming she’s headed for a zero-zero with us here, she’ll make turnover in about fifty-three minutes, and she should reach us in another hour and ten minutes. Current range is five-three-point-niner million kilometers.”

“Thank you, Wallace.”

“You’re welcome, Ma’am.”

Honor thought some more. Should she go ahead and hail
Feliksá
?

If she did, it would take only three minutes for a message from her to reach the cruiser, as opposed to the forty minutes-plus minutes it would take any message from Obermeyer to reach her, even assuming Obermeyer realized who and what she was. It was far from certain that a Silesian system, especially one as poverty-stricken as Casimir, had the sensor ability to identify a target this far out. For that matter, they might not even have detected
Feliksá
’s hyper footprint! And even if they had, Obermeyer almost certainly couldn’t know what
Feliksá
was. In fact, her most reasonable assumption would be that it was another slaver or pirate headed in to avail itself of Casimir Depot’s hospitality. Which would present her with an interesting quandary of her own. Did she contact the newcomer and warn it to stay away from the platform? Or did she contact the newcomer and encourage it—assuming it was armed—to
attack
the platform and its new tenants? And what happened if she sent a personal message to what she
thought
was an outlaw vessel…and it got received, instead, by a Confederacy Navy cruiser? Now,
there
was an entertaining thought.

Either way, Honor could get a message to the cruiser a lot faster than anything from the inner system could reach her, and opening the conversation on her terms had a lot to recommend it. If nothing else, she could get her version of events in front of Teschendorff before
Obermeyer’s
version could possibly reach him.

The flip side to that was that it was evident
Feliksá
was already headed for the platform. She’d shaped her course for it from the moment she made her alpha translation, so she clearly hadn’t come to Casimir to conduct any official business in the
inner
system. That suggested several possibilities, especially if one wanted to assume certain devious and underhanded motivations were in play, and given the way Honor had “coincidentally” met John Browne Matheson in the first place…

“Well,” she said almost whimsically, “I imagine we’ll find out what she’s doing here in about two hours, then.”

*
   
*
   
*

In actual fact, it was only a little over ninety minutes later, when
Feliksá
had closed to fifteen light-seconds, that Florence Boyd turned to Honor.

“Ma’am,” she said very formally, “we have a com request from
Feliksá
. Commodore Teschendorff asks to speak directly to you.”

“Well, it would appear the good commodore knows we’re in the neighborhood,” Honor murmured, then nodded to the com officer. “Put it on the main display, Florence.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Commander Harrington,” Commodore Mieczyslaw Teschendorff’s image said from the main display a few seconds later, “I trust you have at least
some
explanation for this flagrant violation of Silesian sovereignty.” He frowned, eyebrows lowered above his gray eyes, and shook his head. “I was shocked—
shocked!—
when I communicated with Governor Obermeyer on my arrival in the system and she informed me of your high-handed actions! Frankly, I would never have
believed
a Manticoran officer of your experience could possibly have been guilty of such an unwarranted intrusion into the Confederacy’s internal affairs!”

It seemed to Honor that more than one of the people on
Hawkwing
’s bridge cringed. For herself, she only tipped back in her chair, lips slightly pursed.

“I will do you the courtesy,” Teschendorff continued in that same grimly outraged tone, “of assuming you at least believed it was essential to move quickly in a case such as this one. That, however, is far too weak a justification to be stretched to cover this sort of high-handed action! Governor Obermeyer has made it clear to me that if, in fact, the incredible things you’ve claimed about the situation onboard that platform are accurate, no one in Casimir had the least idea any of it was occurring. Surely an officer in Manticoran service, aware of how critical good relations between our star nations are, should have realized that the appropriate course of action, should this information have come into your hands, was to bring it to Governor Obermeyer’s attention so
she
could deal with it. She has assured me that had you—as every canon of interstellar law clearly required—informed her of your suspicions, she would have acted promptly and forcefully to investigate your claims. As it is, you have handed all of us the potential for a grievous interstellar incident—one, I fear, which could very well lead to sufficiently severe consequences to more than negate whatever
positive
results your unilateral actions in this system may have achieved.”

Honor cocked her head to one side, and it appeared to more than one of her bridge personnel that her lips were twitching.

“I suppose,” Teschendorff continued heavily, “that all of us are fortunate happenstance has brought my flagship to Casimir at this particular moment.” He shook his head again, his expression hard. “Under the circumstances, my decision to stop off in Casimir in order to allow my personal steward to take sick leave with his family here on his homeworld would appear to have been fortuitous, to say the very least.” He allowed himself a harsh snort of amusement. “Frivolous of me, I suppose, in some ways, but he’s been with me for the better part of thirty T-years. After that long, he deserves a little extra consideration, I think.”

He paused, glowering out of the display, then drew a deep breath.

“I will reach your current position in approximately thirty-four minutes, Commander. I expect to see you here, on my flagship, at your earliest convenience. I trust you’ll see fit to honor that…‘request’ promptly. Teschendorff, clear.”

His transmission ended without allowing her any opportunity to respond, and she tipped her chair back still farther, rocking it from side to side in gentle arcs in the profound silence which followed.

“My,” she murmured finally, apparently oblivious to the deeply anxious eyes all about her, “he
does
seem put out, doesn’t he?”

*
   
*
   
*

Hawkwing
’s pinnace docked neatly in SCNS
Feliksá
’s number one boat bay in obedience to instructions from the heavy cruiser’s flight operations center. The personnel tube ran out as soon as the small craft had settled into the docking arms, and Honor’s flight engineer studied the telltales on his panel beside the hatch.

“Good seal, Ma’am,” he announced…in the same tone, Honor reflected, a sympathetic centurion might have used to inform the Christians that the lions were ready now.

“Very well, Chief,” she said serenely. “Open the door.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

The hatch slid open, and Honor swung herself into the tube’s microgravity. She swam gracefully down its center with Nimitz on her shoulder, caught the grab bar at the far end, and swung the two of them back out into
Feliksá
’s shipboard gravity. She landed lightly, came to attention, and saluted the bulkhead-mounted Confederacy coat of arms which served the Confederacy Navy as a flag, then saluted the lieutenant wearing the orange brassard of a SCN boat bay officer of the deck.

“Permission to come aboard, Sir?” she inquired politely.

“Permission granted, Commander,” the young man replied in a painfully neutral voice. There were no side boys, and no bosun’s pipes twittered, but she saw another lieutenant waiting in the background.

“Thank you,” she said to the BBOD, and raised one eyebrow at the other Silesian officer.

“Lieutenant Osmulski, Commander Harrington,” the chestnut-haired young man said in response to the eyebrow. “I’m the commodore’s flag lieutenant. He asked me to extend his compliments and request you to accompany me to his flag bridge briefing room.”

“Of course, Lieutenant,” Honor said pleasantly. “Please, lead the way.”

*
   
*
   
*

Honor had visited several units of the Confederacy Navy during her various deployments to Silesia. She’d discovered, in the course of those visits, that discipline, training states, and readiness seemed to vary widely from ship to ship. To be honest, she hadn’t been very favorably impressed by most of them. She’d tried hard to avoid the sort of institutional arrogance which all too often seemed to typify Manticoran officers’ attitudes toward their Silesian equivalents, but she was guiltily aware that she hadn’t always succeeded. The truth, she’d concluded, was that the reason so many Manticoran officers looked down their noses at the Silesian navy was that the majority of its ships—and of its ship
commanders—
deserved it.

She hadn’t liked reaching that conclusion about anyone’s navy, but the sad truth was that in a service riddled with graft, corruption, and the worst sort of patronage, sworn to the service of a government which was even more corrupt and rife with peculation than the navy itself, there was very little incentive for officers to maintain the sort of professionalism the Star Kingdom expected from
its
officer corps. She’d told herself there had to be exceptions to that dreary, depressing state of affairs. Unfortunately, she hadn’t met any of them.

Until today.

Despite the occasional hostile glance thrown her way as she followed Lieutenant Osmulski across the boat bay to the lifts, what she was most struck by was the bay’s absolute, spic-and-span cleanliness and order. Every single piece of gear was exactly where it was supposed to be, and she suspected Rose-Lucie Bonrepaux would have been willing to serve a meal on its decksole. Every uniform was not simply clean (which was rare enough on most Silesian ships she’d visited) but neat, and the people in them went about their duties with a briskness and a professionalism which would have been right at home aboard
Hawkwing
herself.

Osmulski waved for her to precede him into the lift car, then followed her in and punched in their destination code. He stood facing her, hands folded respectfully behind him, without speaking, until the car slowed, then stopped.

“This way, please, Commander,” he murmured, waving gracefully to their right as the doors opened, and Honor nodded.

It was no more than a short walk to the flag bridge briefing room, yet everything she saw along the way only confirmed the impression the boat bay had made upon her.
Feliksá
was a typically over-gunned Silesian design, but as far as Honor could see, every centimeter of her was meticulously maintained, and there was obviously nothing at all wrong with the people responsible for running her.

They reached the briefing room. Its door stood open, and Osmulski nodded to indicate she should enter first. She did, with the flag lieutenant a respectful pace and a half behind her, and found herself facing a seated Commodore Teschendorff and a dark-haired, dark-eyed officer in the uniform of a senior captain.
Feliksá
’s CO, she decided, as Osmulski cleared his throat.

“Commander Harrington, Sir,” he announced in a discreet tone.

“So I see,” Teschendorff rumbled. He looked at Honor with scant favor, and his flag captain’s expression was even grimmer. She looked back levelly, her expression calm…and Nimitz’s tail hung relaxed down her back as the ’cat cocked his head to one side and regarded the two senior Silesian officers from her shoulder.

“I am required to inform you, Commander,” Teschendorff said grimly, “that this conversation is being recorded. That recording will be forwarded to Governor Charnowska’s office and, I have no doubt, to the Cabinet. What will happen to it after that, I cannot say, of course. I would not be surprised, however, to find it included in a future formal communication from my government to yours. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Commodore,” she replied calmly.

“Then, Commander,” Teschendorff said, “allow me to inform you that in all my years of service I have never encountered such a brazen case of an officer’s dizzying overstepping of her own, her navy’s, or—for that matter—her
star nation’s
legitimate authority. You’ve clearly taken it upon yourself to operate in vigilante style on the sovereign territory of the Silesian Confederacy. You did not communicate your suspicions, or the evidence upon which they rested, to
any
legitimate official or agency of the Confederacy. Instead, you mounted an attack on a Silesian industrial platform, in which—by your own report to Governor Obermeyer—
fatal
casualties exceeded a thousand. Which doesn’t even include however many people perished aboard the
Evita
when you blew her out of space without, so far as I am aware, any warning or surrender demand at all! There have been pitched battles between squadrons of
warships,
Commander, in which fewer people were killed!”

He paused, but it was obvious he expected no reply. Finally, he inhaled noisily and shook his head.

“Had you brought your evidence to the attention of the proper authorities, it’s highly probable that a properly mounted operation, with the proper support elements in place, could have resolved this entire situation without such a massive level of casualties. I suppose we should count ourselves fortunate that it at least appears your suspicions about conditions aboard the platform were justified. That is
not
to say the actions you took in
respect
to those suspicions were also justified, Commander. That, I feel positive, will not be the view of my government, nor is it my own intention to imply anything of the sort.”