"Admiral Gold Peak," the other woman responded. Originally TF 496's third in command, she'd become it's second in command when Admiral Dunichi Lazlo's flagship, Andreas Vesalius, blew up with all hands. With what remained of Joseph Buckley currently unable to communicate with anyone (assuming there was anyone aboard to do be communicated with), O'Cleary had become the task force's acting CO. Her voice was a little gravelly, but Michelle suspected that was normal, not something—like the stunned anger glowing at the backs of O'Cleary's eyes—produced by the shocking outcome of the Solarian attack on Spindle.
"My boarding parties are now prepared to take possession of your superdreadnoughts, Admiral," Michelle said levelly, "and I fully realize emotions are going to be running high among your personnel. My personnel have been instructed to exercise as much restraint as possible, but they've also been instructed to remember that their own security and the discharge of their orders takes precedence over all other considerations. I sincerely hope no one on either side will cause any avoidable incidents, but I remind you formally, for the record, that under the Deneb Accords, the legal responsibility to avoid such incidents by prompt compliance with my instructions and those of my designated prize crews rests with your personnel, as the ones who have been permitted to surrender."
O'Cleary's jaw tightened visibly, but despite her anger, she had herself firmly under control.
"I assure you, Admiral, that I've made all my personnel aware of that fact," she grated. "As you say, emotions are . . . running high among them. And as you, I hope there will be no 'avoidable incidents'."
"Good." Michelle inclined her head in a brief, courteous half-bow of agreement, then cleared her throat.
"I'm sure you realize, Admiral O'Cleary, that no one here in the Quadrant has made any provision for quartering such a large number of prisoners of war."
Michelle saw O'Cleary's eyes flash at the term "prisoners of war," but she didn't especially care. In point of fact, she was conceding them a status she wasn't required to under interstellar law, and O'Cleary knew it. There'd been no formal declaration of war when Crandall attacked the sovereign territory of another star nation. Technically, her actions amounted to piracy on the grand scale, and Michelle was under no legal obligation to accord her officers and crews the courtesies normally due regular POWs. The fact that she'd allowed them to surrender under the provisions of the Deneb Accords meant she'd chosen to extend that status to them, but whether or not she was legally required to continue to extend it was what the lawyers like to call "a gray area."
"Governor Medusa is currently making arrangements to provide food, shelter, and any necessary medical attention," she continued levelly. "We'll do everything in our power to ensure that no one suffers any hardship. Despite that, however, it's very likely—inevitable, to be honest—that housing and services are going to be jury-rigged, at best, at least initially. As I say, we'll try to avoid imposing hardship conditions, but, again, I remind you that the Deneb Accords specifically recognize the right of any belligerent to use whatever means are necessary, up to and including lethal force, to maintain order among POWs. We have no intention of attempting to pressure any of your personnel into collaborating, and we recognize the Deneb Accords' stipulation that it's the duty of captured personnel to attempt to escape. However, it would be well for you to remind your personnel that that stipulation does not grant immunity from the use of force to stop them from escaping or to maintain order among them."
"Is that an order, Admiral?" O'Cleary asked coldly.
"No, it is not," Michelle replied, equally coldly, enunciating each word carefully. "It is, however, a very strong suggestion, and I remind you our current conversation is being recorded. It can—and will be—produced at any inquiry which may result from your personnel's conduct—or ours—while your people are in our custody."
Their eyes locked for several seconds. Then O'Cleary inhaled deeply.
"Very well. Your 'suggestion' is noted, and I'll speak to my people. Is there anything else?"
"Yes," Michelle said, "there is. As I'm sure you've already deduced for yourself, the combined manpower of my fleet is far inferior, numerically, to that of your own task force." Not that I have any intention of admitting just how inferior, she added silently. "That poses some obvious difficulties for my boarding parties—difficulties which might well provoke the sort of incident we've both just agreed should be avoided—and I've been giving some thought to ways those difficulties might be alleviated. By my staff's calculations, the combined small craft and escape pod capacity of your superdreadnoughts should suffice to remove approximately five thousand of your personnel from each ship."
O'Cleary's face stiffened, and she began to open her mouth indignantly, but Michelle continued coldly.
"Before you say a word, Admiral. I advise you to consider your position carefully. As you've just acknowledged, interstellar law requires you to obey my lawful commands. I, on the other hand, am obligated to provide for the reasonable safety of your personnel as long as you and they do obey my lawful commands. The planet Flax is less than one million kilometers from your present position. That's well within the powered range of your life pods, even allowing a two hundred percent reserve for an unassisted landing. In short, removing your personnel from your vessels in the manner I've indicated poses no threat to life or limb, assuming you've properly maintained the equipment in question. As a consequence, I'm formally informing you that failure to comply with this instruction will be interpreted as a decision on your part to resume hostilities."
She held the Solarian's eyes with her own, daring O'Cleary to call her bluff while silently praying the other woman was smart enough to realize it was no bluff at all. After a handful of tense heartbeats, it was O'Cleary's eyes which fell.
"I understand," she grated.
"I'm glad to hear that." Michelle gave her a tight smile. "Once your small craft and life pods have separated from your starships, they'll proceed to Flax. There, they will enter orbit as Admiral Khumalo directs and comply with any additional instructions he may issue. They will not land except as he or I specifically order. We'll make every effort to get them planet-side as promptly as possible, consonant with Governor Medusa's ability to arrange accommodations. I'll guarantee that, under any circumstances, your life pods will be allowed to make planetfall well within their life-support endurance. If, however, any of your small craft or life pods fail to comply with instructions from myself, Admiral Khumalo, or our designated subordinates, they will be destroyed. I realize these arrangements are unusual, but so are our present circumstances. I've attempted to reach the best compromise I can between the security of my own people and the proper treatment of yours. I expect you to make it clear to all your personnel that we intend to treat them as decently and honorably as circumstances permit, but that any disobedience to our lawful instructions will be met promptly with whatever level of force—up to and including deadly force—we feel is required. Is that understood, as well?"
"Yes," O'Cleary got out.
"Good. You may not believe this, Admiral, but I take no pleasure in issuing instructions I know must seem humiliating. Unfortunately, I have no choice. In fact, I'd be derelict in my responsibility to ensure the safety of your personnel if I failed to take the measures necessary to control the present situation and prevent the sort of escalation which would require me to use force to enforce the terms of your surrender."
Michelle gazed into O'Cleary's eyes for another moment, hoping the Solarian could recognize the sincerity in her own expression. Then she nodded courteously.
"Gold Peak, clear," she said, and turned back to the master plot with an inner sigh.
Truth be told, O'Cleary's attitude had been less belligerent than she'd feared. Unfortunately, that didn't mean it made Michelle happy. Nor, for that matter, did it mean the other officers and enlisted personnel aboard those surrendered ships were going to share O'Cleary's attitude.
* * *
"ETA three minutes, Ma'am," the pinnace'
s flight engineer said.
"Thank you, PO Pettigrew," Abigail Hearns replied, then stood and turned to face the armed, skinsuited men and women of her boarding party. Given the nature of their mission, there weren't a great many of them. In fact, there were a lot less of them than she wished she had.
"Three minutes, people," she said, and saw expressions and shoulders tighten. "Remember your briefings, and watch yourselves. We don't want any accidents—or incidents—and this sort of thing can be risky enough even aboard a friendly ship. So while we'd like to avoid any unpleasantness, we'd really like to have all of you back on board safe and sound, too."
One or two people chuckled, and Abigail allowed herself an answering smile. Then she looked at the youthful midshipman in the seat beside hers. In some ways, young Walter Corbett reminded her of Gwen Archer, with the same red hair and green eyes. But Corbett had a truly monumental nose, compared to Archer's, and he was only nineteen and skinny as a rail, to boot. He was also possessed of a nervous energy that found the onerous task of sitting still difficult under normal conditions.
Today's conditions were anything but normal, however, and Corbett had sat almost unbreathing for the last ten minutes, his nose two centimeters from the viewport as he stared out it at the shattered behemoth waiting for them.
Abigail didn't blame him. Corbett's snotty cruise might have been less personally and directly terrifying (so far, at least) than her own aboard then-Captain Oversteegen's Gauntlet, but there'd been terror and cataclysm enough to go around. And, she thought, any temptation to smile fading as she remembered how the other ships of HMS Tristram's division had been slaughtered by Josef Byng, he'd had ample demonstration of the risks attendant upon his chosen profession.
And he's about to get more, she reminded herself e grimly. Unlike young Corbett, she'd seen the insides of butchered starships before. Let's try and see to it he gets back aboard Tristram in one piece so he can at least profit from the experience that's about to provide so much nightmare fodder.
"Remember, Walt," she hadn't spoken loudly, but Corbett's head twitched around like a startled rabbit's, "you're a Queen's officer. I know you never expected to be doing anything like this on your snotty cruise. Well, I didn't expect everything that happened on my snotty cruise, either, as Lieutenant Gutierrez here could testify."
She twitched her own head at the massive lieutenant sitting in the row of seats immediately behind the two of them. His Marine-style armored skinsuit was badged with the shoulder flash of the Owens Steadholder's Guard, not the Royal Manticoran Marines, and a well-used flechette gun rode the cargo rack above his head. A sound which might have been an understatement-spawned snort came from the general direction of the lieutenant in question, and a quick grin danced across Corbett's face in response. Clearly he'd heard all about then-Sergeant Matteo Gutierrez and Midshipwoman Hearns' adventures on the planet Refuge.
"You need to remember three things," Abigail continued in a rather sterner tone. "First, you are a Queen's officer. Second, any Sollies still alive in there "—she nodded towards the forward bulkhead, beyond which the wreck of SLNS Charles Babbage, one-time flagship of Battle Squadron 371, Solarian League Navy, waited for them—"have spent their entire careers thinking of themselves as the most powerful navy in the galaxy and of the Star Empire of Manticore—and it's navy—as an upstart little pipsqueak with delusions of grandeur. Third, we have no idea how many Solly personnel may still be alive aboard the Babbage or what kind of shape they may be in, but there are less than thirty people in our boarding party."
She looked into his eyes steadily until he nodded, then continued.
"Right this minute, most of Babbage's surviving crew are probably still in a state of shock. I don't know how long that's going to last, and from our perspective, it could be either a good thing or a bad thing . . . or possibly even both at once. On the one hand, most of them are probably too stunned and too focused on hoping someone's going to come and find them to be thinking about any organized, effective resistance. On the other hand, even if ninety percent of her company is dead, there are still ten times as many survivors aboard her as in Tristram's entire complement. A lot of them are going to be too happy to see anybody coming to pull them out of the wreckage to give us any trouble, but I'll be astonished if any of them are thinking very clearly. For the ones who aren't, the shock and humiliation—and the anger—of being hammered so badly by a bunch of 'neobarbs' may push some of them into open defiance. And, frankly, the fact that you're only a midshipman's going to piss off a lot of the people you're about to run into. They'd probably resent taking orders from you under any circumstances; under these circumstances, what they feel is going to be a lot worse than simple resentment.
"That leaves you with two problems you're going to have to balance off. First, be aware of their resentment and make what allowance for it you can, but, second, remember you are an officer, that they are subject to your orders, and that an appearance of weakness may well lead to some kind of incident."
She paused once more, and Corbett nodded again.
"Yes, Ma'am," he said, and despite her grim awareness of what awaited them inside that broken ship, Abigail's lips twitched. It would have been unfair to call his tone plaintive, but that was headed in the right direction.
"It probably won't be that bad, Walt. Not where the survivors are concerned, at least. Yes, you have to be aware of all the things I've just said. But that's why I've attached the Bosun to your group. I wouldn't go so far as saying I'm sending him along to 'look after you,' but I will say I expect you to remember he's been in the Navy since you were five T-years old. Use his experience accordingly."
"Yes, Ma'am," Corbett said more firmly, and Abigail glanced over his shoulder at Gutierrez. The lieutenant's eyes met hers with the memory of another middy who'd desperately needed the experience of another veteran noncom, and his reassuring nod was a vast relief. Obviously, Matteo had had a few words of his own with Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Musgrave, Tristram's bosun.
"Then all I'm going to add," she told the youngster, "is that you're going to see some terrible things in the next few hours." She held his gaze steadily and felt a glow of approval when it didn't waver. "No matter what you think you can imagine, it's going to be worse. I know. I've seen it before, and there's no way to really prepare someone for it until they've experienced it for themselves. It's all right to feel shocked, nauseated. In fact, there'd be something wrong with you if you didn't. But whatever we feel, we still have our responsibilities, and I think if you focus on your responsibilities, on getting the job done, you'll find it helps. That's another thing I found out the hard way."
"Yes, Ma'am," he repeated.
"Good."
She looked up into her personal armsman's eyes again for a moment, gave him a tiny nod of acknowledgment, then patted Corbett lightly on the shoulder and—as she'd just advised the midshipman to do—turned her thoughts to her own duties.
* * *
Rear Admiral Michael Oversteegen watched his plot aboard HMS Rigel. Despite his relaxed, comfortable, loose-limbed sprawl in his command chair, his eyes were alert, sharply focused on the display's icons.
"Anythin' from Major Markiewicz or Sebastián, Irena?" he asked.
"No, Sir," Lieutenant Irena Thomas' tone could not have been more respectful, but Oversteegen's lips twitched in a slight smile. Respectful or not, it was the tone a subordinate used to inform a superior officer that he should tend to his own knitting, secure in the knowledge she would somehow remember to inform him if anyone asked to speak to him.
Showin' more worry than you want to, aren't you, Michael? he asked himself sardonically. Still, I s'pose you're not th' only one that's true of just now.
His smile faded, and he glanced at the tactical board at Commander Steren Retallack's station. His ops officer sat tipped back, arms folded, but Oversteegen knew Retallack was watching the "surrendered" Solarian SDs like the proverbial hawk. And well he should be.
 
; Like everyone else in Tenth Fleet, Oversteegen devoutly hoped Michelle Henke's elaborate precautions would prove unnecessary, but he fervently agreed with his CO's disinclination to be proven wrong about that sort of assumption. At the moment, none of the Solarian SDs had more than fifteen hundred personnel still aboard, which—given their old-fashioned manpower-intensive design philosophy—was too few people for them to effectively move or fight. That, unfortunately, wasn't quite the same thing as saying they didn't have enough people to fire their weapons. To be sure, their active targeting systems were down, as were their wedges and defensive sidewalls, but the hugely redundant passive sensors any ship-of-the-wall mounted would be more than capable of providing accurate target data on anything inside energy range.
The Deneb Accords and interstellar law were very clear on the mutual responsibilities of victor and vanquished. When O'Cleary dropped her impeller wedges in the universal FTL signal that she surrendered, Tenth Fleet had been legally obligated to grant quarter rather than continuing the attack while it waited for her formal, light-speed surrender offer to arrive. (Assuming, of course, that Michelle Henke had chosen to regard them as anything besides pirates.) By the same token, O'Cleary's ships were legally required to stay surrendered, with their crews obedient to the lawful orders of any boarding party, if they didn't want the other side to renew the action. There was, however, a bit of a gray area in that the crew of any captured ship had a legal right to attempt to retake their vessel, and one could argue that ambushing a boarding party when it first came onboard constituted a sort of preemptive retaking. Whether or not the argument held up in court would depend upon whose court it was, but that would be cold comfort to anyone—on either side—who got killed in the course of the attempt.
And although at the moment, Michael Oversteegen admitted with a cold lack of apology, he didn't really much care what might happen to any Sollies who tried something like that, he did care—very much—what happened to any Manticoran personnel who might be involved.