“Can’t say we’re sorry to see you here, either, Admiral,” another voice said.
Henke turned to find herself facing Commodore Francine Cody of the Montana Customs Patrol. The MCP, which was in the process of being folded into the Talbott Quadrant Customs Patrol, was the closest thing to a navy Montana had possessed before the system’s annexation into the Star Empire. It had never amounted to more than a handful of light, sublight patrol craft, but within those limits it had been a professional and well-trained force, and Cody was its senior officer. She was also a very tall, rangy woman, almost as tall as Henke’s best friend, Honor Harrington. She had a much deeper voice than Honor’s, however, and her brown eyes were dark.
“Especially not after what happened at Spindle…and Manticore,” Cody continued, and those dark eyes held Henke’s levelly. Suttles looked a little uncomfortable and seemed about to say something. But then he stopped with a small headshake. Lopez, on the other hand, only smiled.
“Don’t want to sound alarmist or try to push you into a corner,” the commodore went on, “but I’m just a mite nervous over what’s likely to happen if you were to pull out. Being as we’re sort of…exposed here in Montana.”
“I fully realize that, Commodore,” Henke replied. “Actually, of course, Tillerman is a bit more exposed to anything coming out of the Madras Sector than Montana,” she pointed out, “but we’re fully aware of the threat to Montana. In fact, that’s why I’m here instead of with the Tillerman detachment.” She sipped champagne, then shrugged slightly. “I think we can take it as a given that what happened to Crandall’s pretty much defanged anything from Madras, so I don’t really anticipate a serious threat out of Meyers any time soon. And you’re right; from the perspective of an attack direct from the League—or from any…independent star systems, let’s say—Montana’s the more exposed. As for how long we’ll be here, that’s not really a question I can answer, because so much depends on future events. I can say we have no intention of pulling out of Montana unless there’s a direct, credible, and more serious threat to another system in the Quadrant…or unless the strategic situation changes in a way which requires offensive action.”
“Offensive action against the League, My Lady?” Suttles was clearly nervous about that thought, Henke noted.
“Well, Mister President,” she said dryly, “no one in the Star Empire’s contemplating a counteroffensive against the Kingdom of Oz.”
The storybook reference went right past him—not surprisingly; Henke only knew about it because of her friend Honor’s interesting reading tastes—but he obviously understood her context just fine. And he didn’t seem particularly pleased by it, she noted, and castigated herself for excessive levity.
Again.
“What I mean, Mister President,” she said in a more serious tone, “is that we’ve already been attacked by the Solarian League, and at this time we can’t know what they’re going to do next. If there’s an ounce of sanity in Old Chicago, they’ll denounce Crandall’s actions and apologize for them. Unfortunately, there’s been very little evidence of sanity anywhere in the Sol System for quite some time. So it’s entirely possible that we are, indeed, going to find ourselves in a shooting war with the Solarian League.”
Suttles’ eyes had grown wider at her frankness, but she continued levelly.
“The Empress has already instructed us to activate a long-standing contingency plan. We call it Operation Lacoön, and under that ops plan, the Navy is currently in the process of securing control of every wormhole we can reach and closing them to all Solarian-registry shipping.” She saw Cody wince in understanding of what that meant, but went on for Suttles’ benefit. “Once those wormholes are closed, the Solarian interstellar economy’s going to effectively come to a standstill. Some shipping will still get through, but it’ll all have to be re-routed and our best estimate is that even after they re-route, which will take them T-months, if not years—they’ll be operating at maybe fourteen or fifteen percent of their pre-Lacoön levels. To get back up to, say, fifty percent, they’ll have to at least quadruple their merchant tonnage, and that’s not going to happen tomorrow, either. And if those wormholes stay closed to them, they’ll never get much above sixty percent of where they were before we shut them down.”
She paused and gave the system president a cold, hard smile.
“I don’t care how big their economy is, that’s going to hurt them, Mister President—hurt a lot. The idea is to cause sufficient pain to encourage Undersecretary Kolokoltsov to…rethink the sort of belligerence Josef Byng and Sandra Crandall have displayed. It’s a bit drastic, but to paraphrase an ancient pre-diaspora politician a friend of mine turned up a while ago, ‘The Solarian League is like a hog. You have to kick it in the snout to get its attention.’”
Lopez snorted and even Cody’s lips twitched, but Suttles shook his head.
“Kicking something the size of the Solarian League in the snout strikes me as a…risky undertaking, Lady Gold Peak,” he said.
“Of course it is. Unfortunately, given what’s already happened at Spindle, there’s nothing we can do that isn’t risky, one way or another. It’s the Empress’ opinion”—she emphasized the title ever so slightly and saw the awareness that she was speaking of her own first cousin flicker in his eyes—“that audacity and firmness are our best recourse. I’m sure Baroness Medusa’s dispatches will lay out the Crown’s intentions in much greater detail for you, but essentially, our position’s very simple. We won’t seek additional military confrontations with the League, but we will be firm in the face of additional Solly provocations. And if they seek additional military confrontations, we’ll give them to them.” She showed her teeth briefly. “I believe New Tuscany and Spindle have demonstrated that, for the foreseeable future, our war-fighting technology’s hugely superior to anything the League has. If it comes to more open combat, the Solarian Navy won’t enjoy the experience one bit. And if it does come to additional open combat, if the idiots in Old Chicago who’re allowing themselves to be manipulated escalate the conflict between the League and the Star Empire, then, yes, we’ll adopt the most offensive operational stance we can. Any war we fight against the League has to be as short and decisive as we can make it, because there’s nothing magical about our current tech advantage. It’s the result of the better part of eighty T-years of R and D and combat experience. That’s not something the League’s going to be able to duplicate in a heartbeat, but it’s not something it can’t duplicate if we give it long enough.
“So, in answer to your question, Commodore, we’ll be here for as long as the League is prepared to not escalate. In the event the SLN should head in Montana’s direction, we’ll be prepared to ‘kick it in the snout’ hard enough to convince it that it should damned well go somewhere else. But we’ll also be thinking in terms of taking offensive action should that happen, and that will obviously require the redeployment of my main combat power elsewhere. Of course, by that time, I tend to suspect the Sollies will be a little too busy wrestling with the hexapuma to be sending anything nasty your way.”
* * *
“Midshipwoman Zilwicki, I believe?” a deep voice asked.
Helen turned quickly and found herself facing a tall, blond-haired man in a spotless white Stetson whose crown band of hammered silver and amethyst gleamed under the ballroom’s lights.
“Mr. Westman!” She smiled broadly and extended her hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
“And me ’thout even a pulser,” Westman said with a slow smile of his own, shaking her hand firmly. Then he looked across her shoulder and extended his hand to the officer who’d just walked up behind her.
“Commodore Terekhov.”
The two men were very nearly the same height, with very much the same coloring, although Westman—the younger of the two—looked older. Partly that was because he was so weathered and tanned, but mostly it was because he was a first-generation prolong recipient while Sir Aivars Terekhov was third-ge
neration.
“I’d like to think,” Terekhov replied, shaking the proffered hand, “now that we’re all citizens of the Star Empire, that we could be a little less formal, Mr. Westman. My name’s Aivars.”
“Pleased t’ meet you, Aivars.” The skin around Westman’s blue eyes crinkled. “Remind me a lot of another fella I met. Right pushy, he was. Navy captain, I think. Sure do favor.”
“Well, that’s interesting. You remind me of a cowboy I met once. Stubborn fellow. Got himself into what I think you Montanans call ‘a heap of trouble.’” Terekhov chuckled. “Of course, in the end, it all worked out. He might’ve been stubborn, and he might’ve been a bit hasty, but nobody ever called him stupid.”
“Might want t’ spend a mite more time talking t’ some of my friends and neighbors ’fore you go making rash statements like that,” Westman told him. “And speaking of stupid,” he looked back down at Helen, “I’d heard ’bout the Captain’s promotion, but seems t’ me you didn’t have this”—his index finger brushed the single white stripe on her dress uniform’s shoulder board—“last time you were here.”
“No, Sir.” She elevated her nose. “I, Mr. Westman, am now an ensign.”
“Which,” Terekhov explained dryly, “you can think of as the larval stage of an officer.”
“I bet you didn’t think that when you were one, Sir,” Helen replied demurely. “Of course, that was long enough ago I can see where you might have trouble remembering.”
Westman chuckled, and Terekhov smiled, pleased by the reemergence of the Helen Zilwicki who’d first come aboard Hexapuma. For the first few days after news of Hexapuma’s destruction—followed by the arrival in Spindle of Solly newsies who’d pursued her for stories about her “terrorist father” like raucous hyenas—she’d been quiet, subdued, with the sturdy independence and humor which were so much a part of her quenched. But she’d recovered since. Sir Aivars Terekhov wasn’t foolish enough to think there weren’t still plenty of dark spaces in her emotions, but the link the voyage from Spindle had given her time to heal. But then—
“And how’re the rest of your ‘Nasty Kitties’?” Westman asked.
There was a moment of intense silence, a tiny bubble of stillness in the crowded ballroom, and Westman’s lips tightened as it registered. He looked Terekhov in the eye, and the commodore shook his head ever so slightly.
“I am deeply and sincerely sorry to hear that,” the Montanan said after a moment, his normal drawl hardly noticeable. “I’d heard it was wicked. Never occurred to me Hexapuma was caught in it.” He inhaled deeply. “How bad was it?” he asked quietly.
“As far as we know at this time, none of them got out,” Terekhov said even more quietly, and Westman winced.
“Shit,” he said with soft, terrible intensity, and rested one hand on Helen’s shoulder. She looked up at him again, and the echoes of her pain looked out of her eyes at him, but there were no tears. She truly had healed—some, at least—and she held his gaze levelly.
“Can’t tell you how sorry I am t’ hear that,” he said, and he was speaking to her, not to Terekhov. “I know what you and your ship did for all of us—and especially for me, right here in Montana. No way I could ever pay you back for that, but”—his hand tightened on her shoulder—“that doesn’t mean I’m not ready to try. You need anything, anything at all—either of you,” he looked back up at Terekhov, “you let me know. Might be I won’t be able t’ get it for you, but that sure’s hell doesn’t mean I won’t try.”
* * *
“Are you going to need anything else for the next hour or so, Sir?” Helen asked as she followed Terekhov towards the boat bay lift shafts.
The four days since the state dinner had been a whirlwind of activity for most of Tenth Fleet’s senior officers. The normal peacetime schedule of shore visits would have been arduous enough, given Montana’s recent inclusion in the Star Empire and the Navy’s awareness of the importance of establishing a positive relationship with the star system’s political leaders and people. That was more important than ever, under the current circumstances, however, and so the Navy’s officers had found themselves submerged in a tsunami of purely social events—although nothing could truly be “purely social” at the moment—plus a grueling marathon of planning conferences with the local authorities.
Helen and Terekhov had just returned from the commodore’s most recent speaking engagement. She knew he loathed them, but unfortunately for him, he was good at them…not to mention the most popular single Manticoran in the entire Talbott Quadrant. Which meant he was spending far more time than he preferred in morale-boosting public appearances…and that Helen was spending that time, as well.
Now he cocked his head and gave her a quizzical look.
“Only the next hour or so?” he asked.
“Well, Sir, I’m way behind on my exercise schedule. What I’d really like to do is spend thirty minutes or so working out with Chief O’Reilly—assuming he’s free—and then catch a shower before lunch.”
Terekhov nodded. Tamerlane O’Reilly, one of Lieutenant Commander Olga Sanchez’s chief petty officers in Quentin Saint-James’ engineering department, happened to be about the only person in the ship’s company who could match Helen in Neue-Stil, her preferred weaponless combat technique. And she had a point, he thought. As his flag lieutenant. Her duties had expanded over the last few days as badly as his own had. No wonder she was behind on her workouts.
“I think I can spare you. It will be a great hardship, of course. Why, I’ll probably have to punch up my own files on the computer or something equally arduous. However, always bearing in mind how important it is for a Queen’s officer to keep himself—or herself—physically fit, I will make the sacrifice.”
“Oh, thank you, Sir!” she replied in suitably awestruck tones.
“Go.” He raised his right hand flipping the fingertips towards the lift shaft. “Go! Enjoy yourself without so much as a thought for my own grueling labors in your absence.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” she said with a grin, and he smiled after her as she sped off.
* * *
HMS Quentin Saint-James was a Saganami-C-class heavy cruiser, with the small ship’s company her high degree of automation made possible. As such, even a mere ensign—especially a mere ensign assigned to the commodore whose flagship Jimmy Boy happened to be—had a cabin to herself. It wasn’t an incredibly huge cabin, and if there’d been another extraordinarily junior female officer assigned to Commodore Terekhov’s staff they would have shared it, but that wasn’t the case, and Helen was just as happy as she stepped out of the shower, toweling her short hair vigorously.
She tossed the towel on to the unused bunk and stepped in front of the mirror, turning to see the back of her right shoulder, and shook her head with a grin. The Chief had gotten through to her with a combination she hadn’t even seen coming, and she’d thought for a moment she’d dislocated her shoulder when she hit the mat. She hadn’t, but the bruising promised to be spectacular and she imagined the shoulder was going to be stiff and tender for a while.
Probably be a good idea to drop by sickbay and see what Doc Zhin can do about that. I doubt she’s going to be willing to waste any quick-heal on me—more likely to point out to me that “pain is a teacher we do well to heed.” She shook her head. She’s as bad as Master Tye that way! But I bet she’ll at least come up with some old-fashioned aspirin. Funny how something can be around that long and still be the first thing a doctor reaches for when—
Her thoughts paused as a reflection of the blinking green light on the base of her desk terminal caught her attention. It hadn’t been there when she discarded her sweats and headed for the shower, and she wondered who the message was from.
I hope the Commodore didn’t wind up needing me anyway! I really needed that workout, but I’d hate to not be there if he did need me.
She reclaimed her towel and wrapped it around herself like a sarong, then perched in the desk chair and keyed the dis
play. The header of a recorded message came up, and she frowned. It was an inter-ship message, which meant it wasn’t from the Commodore, but she didn’t recognize the originating address. Charles Ward? What kind of name was that for a ship?
Well, I guess it’s no sillier than Quentin Saint-James or Marconi Williams, even if I never heard of him—whoever he was, she thought as she punched the play key. I wonder what he d—
Her thought chopped off in mid-word as the display image dissolved into the face of the message’s sender. She stared at it, unable—or maybe unwilling—to believe what she was seeing as the playback began.
“Hi, Helen,” Paulo d’Arezzo said. “Sorry I haven’t been able to get a message to you sooner. It’s been crazy! But they promise me a dispatch boat’s pulling out for Spindle this afternoon. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the Kitty.” His face twisted, but he continued unflinchingly. “She never had a chance when they took out Hephaesteus, but I’m fine—fine, you hear me? And Captain Lewis and Senior Chief Wanderman are fine, too. In fact, we’re all in the same ship now. There was a drill on Weyland that had all the R and D staff dirtside when the attack came in. And Aikawa made it too. He wasn’t in the ship when they hit us. He was in transit between Manticore and the station.”
He paused, his recorded lips seeming to tremble just a bit, as he came to the end of that first, rapid-fire spurt of words. Then he drew a deep breath, and his gray eyes were dark and shadowed when he spoke again.
“It’s…sort of hard to believe anyone’s still alive,” he said softly, “and the one person I most need to talk to about it’s off in some ship named Quentin Saint-James. I wish to hell you were right here right this minute, but, God—! When I heard about what happened to Hephaestus—and to the Kitty—I went down on my knees because Captain Terekhov’d taken you with him. I’ve run scared where people are concerned for too long, Helen. But the Yawata Strike clarified a lot of things for a lot of people, and one of the things it clarified for me is how I feel about you. I think you feel the same—or I sure hope you do, because I’m going to be a real pain in the ass if you don’t!”