Honorverse favorite passages

Hutch wrote:Ok, one more since work has moved from slow to comatose....

Honor (and we) learn something about Tom Thiesman....

"And have you come up with a name for Thomas Theisman, too?" she asked.

His right true-hand closed into the letter "S" and "nodded" up and down in the sign for "Yes," but it seemed to Honor to be moving a little slower than usual. He looked up at her for a second or two, and her eyebrows rose. She could literally feel him hesitating. It wasn't because he was concerned about how she might react to it, but more as if . . . as if he didn't quite expect her to believe it.

Then he raised his right hand, palm-in, touched his forehead with his index finger, then moved it up and to the right. As his hand rose, his forefinger alternated back and forth between the straight extended position indicating the number "1" and the crooked position indicating the letter "X" before the hand turned palm-out and closed into the letter "S" once more. Then both hands came together in front of him, thumbs and index fingers linked, before they rose to his chin, left in front of right, thumb and first two fingers of each hand signing the letter "P." They paused for a moment, then separated downward, and Honor felt her eyebrows rising even higher.

"'Dreams of Peace'?" she said, speaking very carefully, as if she couldn't quite believe what she heard herself saying. "That's his treecat name?"

Nimitz nodded his head very firmly, and Honor tasted his confidence—his assurance—about the name he'd assigned. No wonder he'd been hesitant to share it with her! If anyone in the galaxy had demonstrated his unflinching, tough-as-nails readiness to do whatever duty required of him, however grim that duty might be, it was Thomas Theisman! He was the one who'd rebuilt the Republican Navy into a war machine that could actually face the RMN in combat. The man who'd planned and executed Operation Thunderbolt. The man who'd planned Operation Beatrice! The man—
Her thoughts paused, and Nimitz stared up into her eyes with an intensity which was rare, even for the two of them. They sat that way for several, endless seconds, and then Honor inhaled deeply.

Yes, Theisman had always done his duty. Would always do his duty, without flinching or hesitating, whatever its demands. But she supposed the same thing could be said of her, and what was she doing here on this planet, of all planets in the universe, if she didn't "dream of peace?" And the more she thought about it, about what it must have been like to spend all those years trying to defend his star nation against an external enemy even while he saw State Security making "examples" out of men and women he'd known for years—out of friends—the more clearly she realized just how longingly a man like Thomas Theisman might dream of peace.

I often wonder if Honor has told Tom that. Or if he will learn it from his treecat guard once he learns to read sign.

I think he will be pleased. I know I was.

Hutch wrote:Ok, one more since work has moved from slow to comatose....

Honor (and we) learn something about Tom Thiesman....

"And have you come up with a name for Thomas Theisman, too?" she asked.

His right true-hand closed into the letter "S" and "nodded" up and down in the sign for "Yes," but it seemed to Honor to be moving a little slower than usual. He looked up at her for a second or two, and her eyebrows rose. She could literally feel him hesitating. It wasn't because he was concerned about how she might react to it, but more as if . . . as if he didn't quite expect her to believe it.

Then he raised his right hand, palm-in, touched his forehead with his index finger, then moved it up and to the right. As his hand rose, his forefinger alternated back and forth between the straight extended position indicating the number "1" and the crooked position indicating the letter "X" before the hand turned palm-out and closed into the letter "S" once more. Then both hands came together in front of him, thumbs and index fingers linked, before they rose to his chin, left in front of right, thumb and first two fingers of each hand signing the letter "P." They paused for a moment, then separated downward, and Honor felt her eyebrows rising even higher.

"'Dreams of Peace'?" she said, speaking very carefully, as if she couldn't quite believe what she heard herself saying. "That's his treecat name?"

Nimitz nodded his head very firmly, and Honor tasted his confidence—his assurance—about the name he'd assigned. No wonder he'd been hesitant to share it with her! If anyone in the galaxy had demonstrated his unflinching, tough-as-nails readiness to do whatever duty required of him, however grim that duty might be, it was Thomas Theisman! He was the one who'd rebuilt the Republican Navy into a war machine that could actually face the RMN in combat. The man who'd planned and executed Operation Thunderbolt. The man who'd planned Operation Beatrice! The man—
Her thoughts paused, and Nimitz stared up into her eyes with an intensity which was rare, even for the two of them. They sat that way for several, endless seconds, and then Honor inhaled deeply.

Yes, Theisman had always done his duty. Would always do his duty, without flinching or hesitating, whatever its demands. But she supposed the same thing could be said of her, and what was she doing here on this planet, of all planets in the universe, if she didn't "dream of peace?" And the more she thought about it, about what it must have been like to spend all those years trying to defend his star nation against an external enemy even while he saw State Security making "examples" out of men and women he'd known for years—out of friends—the more clearly she realized just how longingly a man like Thomas Theisman might dream of peace.

I often wonder if Honor has told Tom that. Or if he will learn it from his treecat guard once he learns to read sign.

I think he will be pleased. I know I was.

roseandheather wrote:*curls up in fetal position and cries a lot*

Something funny going on here, Skip."

" 'Funny'? What d'you mean 'funny'?" Citizen Commander Caslet demanded. TG 14.1 sped straight towards the enemy at a combined closing velocity of over forty-six thousand KPS, which meant maximum effective missile range would be just over thirteen million kilometers. They'd enter that range in less than five more minutes, and he was more anxious than he wanted to reveal. Vaubon was only a light cruiser, hardly a high-priority target with battleships to shoot at, but there were light units on the other side, as well, and they might well choose to engage Vaubon simply because she was small enough they might actually get through her defenses.

"It's just—" Citizen Lieutenant Foraker leaned back, rubbing the tip of her nose, then grimaced. "Let me show you, Skip," she said, and switched her own tactical readouts to Caslet's tertiary display. "Watch this motion," she said, and he gazed intently at the display as the raggedy-assed enemy formation bobbed and swirled. There'd been some movement in it all along, but it had become more pronounced as the range dropped—a fact he'd put down to nerves.

"I don't—" he began, but Foraker was tapping commands into her console, and Caslet's mouth closed with a snap as the same movement replayed itself. The only difference was that this time a half-dozen or so of the dots left little worms of light behind, charting their paths, and the "formation" they'd dropped into. . . .

"What is that?" he asked slowly, and this time there was more than a trace of worry in his techno-nerd tactical officer's reply.

"Skip, if I didn't know better—and I don't know better—I'd say six of those battlecruisers just slid into a modified vertical wall of battle."

"That's crazy, Shannon," Caslet's astrogator said. "Battlecruisers don't form wall against battleships! That'd be suicide!"

"Yep," Foraker agreed. "That's exactly what it would be—for battlecruisers."

Caslet stared at the glowing light worms and felt his stomach drop clear out of the universe. It wasn't possible. And even if it were possible, surely one of the battlecruisers or battleships with their better sensors and more powerful computers would have seen it before a light cruiser did!

But those battlecruisers and battleships didn't have his resident tac witch, a cold, clear voice said in his brain.

"Communications! Get me a priority link to the Flag—now!"

Hutch wrote:Haven't added one in awhile (been re-reading the first 3 RoF novels), so I picked a book, opened it up, and found this little gem from Flag in Exile.

We begin to see just how smart a certain Havenite tac-witch really is....

Something funny going on here, Skip."

" 'Funny'? What d'you mean 'funny'?" Citizen Commander Caslet demanded. TG 14.1 sped straight towards the enemy at a combined closing velocity of over forty-six thousand KPS, which meant maximum effective missile range would be just over thirteen million kilometers. They'd enter that range in less than five more minutes, and he was more anxious than he wanted to reveal. Vaubon was only a light cruiser, hardly a high-priority target with battleships to shoot at, but there were light units on the other side, as well, and they might well choose to engage Vaubon simply because she was small enough they might actually get through her defenses.

"It's just—" Citizen Lieutenant Foraker leaned back, rubbing the tip of her nose, then grimaced. "Let me show you, Skip," she said, and switched her own tactical readouts to Caslet's tertiary display. "Watch this motion," she said, and he gazed intently at the display as the raggedy-assed enemy formation bobbed and swirled. There'd been some movement in it all along, but it had become more pronounced as the range dropped—a fact he'd put down to nerves.

"I don't—" he began, but Foraker was tapping commands into her console, and Caslet's mouth closed with a snap as the same movement replayed itself. The only difference was that this time a half-dozen or so of the dots left little worms of light behind, charting their paths, and the "formation" they'd dropped into. . . .

"What is that?" he asked slowly, and this time there was more than a trace of worry in his techno-nerd tactical officer's reply.

"Skip, if I didn't know better—and I don't know better—I'd say six of those battlecruisers just slid into a modified vertical wall of battle."

"That's crazy, Shannon," Caslet's astrogator said. "Battlecruisers don't form wall against battleships! That'd be suicide!"

"Yep," Foraker agreed. "That's exactly what it would be—for battlecruisers."

Caslet stared at the glowing light worms and felt his stomach drop clear out of the universe. It wasn't possible. And even if it were possible, surely one of the battlecruisers or battleships with their better sensors and more powerful computers would have seen it before a light cruiser did!

But those battlecruisers and battleships didn't have his resident tac witch, a cold, clear voice said in his brain.

"Communications! Get me a priority link to the Flag—now!"

McQueen nodded. The other officers and the Commissioner were utterly silent, their eyes fixed on her like so many laser links, scanning for information. The destiny of Haven balanced on a sword's edge.

"Thank you for that accurate summation, Citizen Brigadier," she said. "I will remark again that the insurrection seems to have been started by LaBoeuf's Levelers, and that they make Cordelia Ransom look like a benign moderate. As Citizen Brigadier Conflans has outlined, frustrating their attack presents us with multiple problems. I believe, however, that we can kill a number of birds with one stone here."

"Citizen Captain Norton," she said. The commander of Rousseau came to attention. "I want you to take this ship down. As far down as you safely can, in a stable circuit over the capital. That may—should—make anyone else hesitate about firing on us. Because anything that misses will go straight down into the built-up area."

There were a few winces. A fifty-megaton explosion in space was no great matter, unless it happened to be near the pinprick dot of a ship. A fifty-megatonner going off on a planetary surface didn't bear thinking about, and an X-ray warhead would be like driving the red-hot poker of God into the surface over and over again.

"You will also," she went on, "rig for planetary bombardment—kinetic energy strikes."

"Within the city limits, Citizen Admiral?"

"That's where the potential targets are. You will of course commence strikes only on my explicit order." Her voice had the mechanical precision of an industrial forging hammer as it went on: "Citizen Brigadier, you will prepare to embark the Rousseau's full complement of Marines in everything that will get to the surface. You are tasked with securing the perimeter of Committee HQ and holding it against all comers."

"Citizen Admiral," he said quietly. "As I said, there are over a million rioters attacking the Government district."

"That will also be taken care of," McQueen said, her face like something carved from crystal. She looked up at Fontein. "I assume that you will authorize all necessary measures, Sir?"

The silence stretched. "All necessary measures, Citizen Admiral," Fontein said. "Any and all measures necessary are hereby authorized in advance at your discretion. I will so record it."

"Excellent," McQueen said. "Most excellent, Sir." She turned to her staff. "This is now a purely military operation."

"Ah . . . Citizen Admiral," the Marine officer said. "With a million citizens in the streets, how can the situation be considered purely military?"

cQueen's face showed expression for the first time in the meeting. The gesture that drew her lips back over her teeth was not in the least like a smile.

"Don't think of it as millions of citizens, Citizen Brigadier Conflans," she said. "Think of it as having a very, very large target selection." She met his eyes. "This is essential to the future of the People's Republic. Am I understood?"

"I'm afraid, however," she continued then, "that we're not quite finished with the Commodore tonight."
She glanced at Terekhov, who looked back at her with an expression which could only have been described as wary.

"There is a phrase with which Queen's officers become altogether too familiar, ladies and gentlemen," she went on, her tone much more serious. "That phrase is 'the exigencies of the Service,' and what it means is that those men and women who have chosen to wear the Queen's uniform and to guard and protect all of us—you and me—frequently find their own lives being stepped upon by the demands of the service they have chosen to give. They do not simply risk life and limb for us, ladies and gentlemen. They also sacrifice the rest of their lives—sacrifice time as fathers and mothers, as wives and husbands. Commodore Terekhov was spared less than one T-week in Manticore before he was sent back to us. Less than one T-week, ladies and gentlemen, after all of the tremendous risks and dangers he and the men and women of HMS Hexapuma and the other ships of his squadron in Monica endured for all of us."

The huge ballroom was completely still, now. Completely hushed. Baroness Medusa's voice sounded clear and quiet against that backdrop of silence.

"There can be no true, adequate compensation for the sacrifices men and women in uniform make for the people they serve and protect. How does one set a price on the willingness to serve? How does one set a proper wage for the willingness to die to protect others? And how does one honor those who have honored their oaths, given the last true measure of devotion, in the service of their star nation and the belief in human dignity and human freedom?"

She paused in the silence, then shook her head.
"The truth is, that we cannot give them the compensation, the honor, they have so amply deserved of us. Yet whether what we can give them is what they deserve or not, we recognize our obligation to try. To try to show them, and everyone else, that we recognize the sacrifices they have made. That we understand how very much we owe them. And that they are to us pearls beyond price, men and women we cannot deserve yet must always thank God come to us anyway.

"Those were the men and women of HMS Hexapuma. Of HMS Warlock, HMS Vigilant, HMS Gallant, HMS Audacious, HMS Aegis, HMS Javelin, HMS Janissary, HMS Rondeau, HMS Aria, and HMS Volcano.

"We cannot individually honor those men and women. Too many of them are no longer here for us to honor, and most of those who survived are somewhere else this night, somewhere else in the Queen's uniform, serving her—and all of us—yet again as 'the exigencies of the Service' demand. But if we cannot individually honor each of them, we can honor all of them collectively in the person of the man who commanded them."

Aivars Terekhov looked straight before him, and it wasn't simple modesty. He was looking at something only he could see—the men and women of those ships. The faces no one would ever see again.

"Commodore Terekhov," Medusa said, turning to address him directly for the first time, "you were not aware that among the dispatches you carried when you returned to Spindle was a letter of instruction from Her Majesty to me. Please stand, Commodore."

Terekhov obeyed slowly.

"Come here, Commodore," she said quietly, and he walked across to her. As he did, Augustus Khumalo, Lemuel Sackett, and Emil Karlberg rose in turn and followed him. Sackett carried a small velvet case which had apparently been hidden under the table at his place. Karlberg carried a small cushion which had been similarly concealed.

The four of them came to a halt in front of Medusa, and Sackett presented the small case to her. She accepted it, but she also looked at Khumalo.

"Attention to orders!" the vice admiral's deep voice announced, and Helen felt herself coming to her feet in automatic response, accompanied by every other uniformed man and woman in that vast ballroom.

"Commodore Aivars Terekhov," Medusa said in a clear, carrying voice, "on the sixteenth day of February, 1921 Post Diaspora, units of the Royal Manticoran Navy under your command entered the Monica System, acting upon intelligence which you had developed consequent to your previous actions in the Split System and the Montana System. In the course of developing that intelligence, and of suppressing violent terrorist movements in both of those star systems, you had become aware of an additional, potentially disastrous threat to the citizens of those star systems then known as the Talbott Cluster and to the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Acting upon your own authority, you moved with the squadron under your command to Monica and there demanded the stand down of the ex-Solarian League Navy battlecruisers which had been delivered to the Union of Monica by parties hostile to the Star Kingdom who were determined to prevent the annexation of the star systems now known as the Talbott Quadrant by the Star Kingdom, for which the citizens of those star systems had freely and democratically petitioned.

"When the senior officer present of the Monican Navy refused to comply with your demand and opened fire upon your vessels, although surprised by the heavy volume, weight, range, and accuracy of that fire, and despite heavy damage and severe casualties, you and the units under your command successfully destroyed the military components of a massive industrial platform and nine of the battlecruisers in question, which were there moored. And, when subsequently attacked by three fully operational and modern battlecruisers, the six remaining units of your squadron engaged and destroyed all of their opponents.

"At the cost of sixty percent of the vessels and seventy-five percent of the personnel under your command, your squadron destroyed or neutralized all of the Solarian-built battlecruisers in the Monica System. Subsequently, although your surviving vessels were too severely damaged to withdraw from the system, you neutralized all remaining units of the Monican Navy, prevented the withdrawal or destruction of the two surviving Solarian battlecruisers, and maintained the status quo in the system for a full week, until relieved by friendly forces.

"It is now my duty, and my enormous honor, by the express direction of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of Manticore, acting as Her Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant and Her personal representative, to present to you the Parliamentary Medal of Valor."

Helen inhaled sharply as Sackett opened the case and Medusa extracted the golden cross and starburst on its blue and white ribbon. Terekhov was much taller than she was, and she rose on tiptoe as he bowed to her so that she could slip the ribbon around his neck and adjust its fall. She positioned the gleaming medal carefully, then looked up at him and—in a gesture Helen was certain hadn't been formally choreographed—touched him very gently on the cheek.

"Her Majesty awards this medal to you, Commodore," she said, "both because you have so deeply and personally merited it, but also as a means of recognizing every man and woman who served with you in Monica. She asks you to wear this medal for them, as much as for yourself."

Terekhov nodded without speaking. Frankly, Helen doubted that he could have spoken at that moment. But Medusa wasn't done with him yet, and she nodded to Karlberg who stooped and placed his cushion on the floor.

"And now, Commodore, there's one more small matter of business which Her Majesty has requested that I take care of for her. Kneel, please."

Terekhov's nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. Then he obeyed her, sinking to his knees on the cushion, and Augustus Khumalo drew his dress sword and extended it, hilt-first, to Baroness Medusa. She took it, looked at it for a moment, then looked down at the officer kneeling before her.

"By the authority vested in me as Her Majesty's Governor General for the Talbott Quadrant, and by Her express commission, acting for and in Her stead," her quiet voice carried with crystal clarity throughout the ballroom, "I bestow upon you the rank, title, prerogatives, and duties of Knight Companion of the Order of King Roger."

The gleaming steel touched his right shoulder, then his left, then went back to his right once more. She let it rest there for a moment, her eyes meeting his, then she smiled and stepped back, lowering the sword.

"Rise, Sir Aivars," she said softly in the hush before the cheers began, "and may your future actions as faithfully uphold the honor of the Queen as your past."

“Damn you!” Houseman shouted. “Don’t you split legal hairs with me, Langtry! If I have to, I’ll have you removed from Foreign Office service at the same time I have her court-martialed!”

“You’re welcome to try.” Langtry snorted contemptuously.
Houseman swelled with fury, and the corner of Honor’s mouth twitched as her own rage raced to meet his. After all his cultured contempt for the military, all his smug assumption of his own superior place in the scheme of things, all he could think of now was to order that same despised military to save his precious skin! The polished, sophisticated surface had cracked, and behind it was an ugly, personal cowardice Honor was supremely ill-equipped to understand, much less sympathize with.
He gathered himself to lash back at Langtry, and she felt the Grayson officer standing mutely to one side. It shamed her to know what he was seeing and hearing, and under all her shame and anger was the raw, bleeding loss of the Admiral’s death and her own responsibility for it. This man—this worm—was not going to throw away everything the Admiral had worked and, yes, died for!

She leaned across the table towards him, meeting his eyes from less than a meter away, and her voice cut across the beginning of his next outburst like a scalpel.

“Shut your cowardly mouth, Mr. Houseman.” The cold words were precisely, almost calmly, enunciated, and he recoiled from them. His face went scarlet, then white and contorted with outrage, but she continued with that same, icy precision that made each word a flaying knife. “You disgust me. Sir Anthony is entirely correct, and you know it—you just won’t admit it because you don’t have the guts to face it.”

“I’ll have your commission!” Houseman gobbled. “I have friends in high places, and I’ll—"

Honor slapped him.

She shouldn’t have. She knew even as she swung that she’d stepped beyond the line, but she put all the strength of her Sphinx-bred muscles into that backhand blow, and Nimitz’s snarl was dark with shared fury. The explosive crack! was like a breaking tree limb, and Houseman catapulted back from the table as blood burst from his nostrils and pulped lips.

A red haze clouded Honor’s vision, and she heard Langtry saying something urgent, but she didn’t care. She grabbed the end of the heavy conference table and hurled it out of her way as she advanced on Houseman, and the bloody-mouthed diplomat’s hands scrabbled frantically at the floor as he propelled himself away from her on the seat of his trousers.

She didn’t know what she would have done next if he’d shown a scrap of physical courage. She never would know, for as she loomed above him she heard him actually sobbing in his terror, and the sound stopped her dead.
Her raw fury slunk back into the caves of her mind, still flexing its claws and snarling, but no longer in control, and her voice was cold and distant . . . and cruel.

“Your entire purpose here was to conclude an alliance with Yeltsin’s Star,” she heard herself say. “To show these people an alliance with Manticore could help them. That was a commitment from our Kingdom, and Admiral Courvosier understood that. He knew the Queen’s honor is at stake here, Mr. Houseman. The honor of the entire Kingdom of Manticore. If we cut and run, if we abandon Grayson when we know Haven is helping the Masadans and that it was our quarrel with Haven that brought us both here, it will be a blot on Her Majesty’s honor nothing can ever erase. If you can’t see it any other way, consider the impact on every other alliance we ever try to conclude! If you think you can get your ‘friends in high places’ to cashier me for doing my duty, you go right ahead and try. In the meantime, those of us who aren’t cowards will just have to muddle through as best we can without you!”

She trembled, but her rage had turned cold. She stared down at the weeping diplomat, and he shrank from her eyes. They were hard with purpose, but all he saw was the killer behind them, and terror choked him.
She glared at him a moment longer, then turned to Langtry. The ambassador was a bit pale, but there was approval in his expression and his shoulders straightened.
.....

......

“As soon as I get to my office com terminal, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend at least a few minutes working on a properly grim delivery. Something formal and stiff with the proper overtones of laboring under the demands of a military hard case who doesn’t understand she’s violating every diplomatic precedent.” Despite the tension, Langtry chuckled. “If I handle this right, I may even get away with holding a gun to a friendly government’s head without chucking my career out the airlock!”

“You can make me as big an ogre as you like as long as saving your career doesn’t slow us down too much,” Honor said with another smile. She stood. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you work on your delivery while we walk to your office?”

Langtry nodded again, grinning even though his eyes were just a bit dazed from her ruthless dispatch. He walked out of the conference room with Honor on his heels, and an even more dazed-looking Commander Brentworth trailed in their wake.

None of them even looked back at the diplomat still sobbing quietly in the shadow of the overturned table.

“I’m afraid this isn’t all of it, Ma’am,” he said in a harsh, clipped voice. “If you’ll come with me?” She nodded and started forward, but he waved Tremaine back as he began to follow. “Not you, Lieutenant.”

Tremaine looked a question at Honor, but something in Ramirez’s voice warned her, and she shook her head quickly. His expression turned mutinous for just a moment, then smoothed, and he stepped back beside Sergeant Talon.

Ramirez led Honor another forty meters, to a bend in the passage, then stopped and swallowed.

“Captain, I’d better stay here.”

She started to ask him a question, but his face stopped her. Instead, she nodded once and stepped around the corner.

The dozen Marines in evidence looked odd. For a moment, she couldn’t understand why, then she realized: they’d all removed their helmets, and every one of them was a woman. The realization struck a terrible icicle through her, and she quickened her pace, then slid to a halt in the open door of a cell.

“Honey, you’ve got to let us have her,” someone was saying softly, gently. “Please. We’ve got to take care of her.”

It was Captain Hibson, and her strong, confident voice was fogged with tears as she bent over the naked, battered young woman on the filthy bunk. The prisoner’s face was almost unrecognizable under its cuts and bruises, but Honor knew her. Just as she knew the equally naked, even more terribly battered woman in her arms.
The young woman clung to her companion desperately, trying to shield her with her own body, and Honor stepped forward numbly. She knelt beside the bunk, and the young woman—the girl—on it stared at her with broken, animal eyes and whimpered in terror.

“Ensign Jackson,” Honor said, and a spark of something like humanity flickered far back in those brutalized eyes. “Do you know who I am, Ensign?”

Mai-ling Jackson stared at her an endless moment longer, then jerked her head in a spastic, uncoordinated nod.
“We’re here to help you, Ensign.” Honor would never know how she kept her voice soft and even, but she did. She touched the stiff, matted hair gently, and the naked ensign flinched as if from a blow. “We’re here to help you,” Honor repeated while tears slid down her face, “but you have to let us have Commander Brigham. The medics will help her, but you have to let her go.”

Ensign Jackson whimpered, clinging even more tightly to the limp body in her arms, and Honor stroked her hair again.

“Please, Mai-ling. Let us help her.”

The ensign looked down at Mercedes Brigham’s blood-caked face, and her whimpers collapsed into a terrible sob. For a moment, Honor thought she would refuse, that they’d have to take Brigham from her by force, but then her desperate grip loosened. Hibson stepped in quickly, lifting the barely breathing Commander in armored arms, and Mai--ling Jackson screamed like a soul in hell as Honor gathered her in a protective embrace.

T-then they came back, a-and I couldn’t fight any more, Ma’am. I-I just couldn’t. I tried, but—" She dragged in a ragged breath. “Commander Brigham could. I-I think she hurt some of them really bad b-before they got her down, and then they beat her and beat her and beat her!” The broken voice climbed, and a medic stepped in with a hypo as she trembled violently in Honor’s arms.

“The Captain tried to stop them, Ma’am. H-he tried, and . . . and they knocked him down with their rifle butts, and then they . . . they—" She twisted in agony, and Honor covered her mouth with her hand, stilling her voice while the hypo took effect. She’d already seen the huge, dried bloodstain on the cell floor and the ragged streaks where someone’s heels had been dragged through it to the door.

“And then they raped us again,” the ensign said at last, her eyes hazy. “Again and again, and . . . and they said how nice it was of their CO to . . . to give them their own whores.”

Her thready voice faded to silence, and Honor eased her back down and bent to kiss the filthy, bruised forehead, then tucked the ensign’s limp hand under the blanket and rose.

“Take care of her,” she told the senior Marine medic, and the woman nodded, her own face wet with tears.

Honor nodded back, then turned towards the door of the cell. As she stepped through it, she drew her sidearm and checked the magazine.

Lieutenant Tremaine stared after her, biting his lip. He’d heard about the discoveries the Marines had made. He hadn’t believed it at first—hadn’t wanted to believe it—but then the medics had carried Commander Brigham’s stretcher past him. He’d believed it then, and the Marines’ fury had been dwarfed by his own, for he knew Mercedes Brigham well. Very well, indeed.

The Captain said she wanted to be alone. She’d ordered everyone to leave her alone. But Scotty Tremaine had seen her face.

She turned a bend in the corridor, and his own face tightened with decision. He laid aside his plasma carbine and went hurrying after her.

Honor climbed the rubble-strewn stairs, ignoring the labored breathing of whoever was trying to catch up with her. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She vaulted up the stairs, using her long legs and the light gravity, brushing past an occasional Marine, stepping through an occasional puddle of Masadan blood, and her single eye glowed like molten steel.

She walked down the final corridor, gaze fixed on the open mess hall door, and a voice was calling her from behind. It was distant and unreal, immaterial, and she ignored it as she stepped into the crowded room.
A Marine officer saluted, then flinched back from her in shock, and she went past him as if he didn’t exist. Her eye swept the lines of prisoners, searching for the face she sought, and found it.

Captain Williams looked up as if he felt her hatred, and his face paled. She walked towards him, shoving people out of her way, and the voice calling her name was even louder as its owner pushed and shoved through the crowd behind her.

Williams tried to twist away, but her left hand tangled in his hair, and he cried out in agony as she slammed his head back against the wall. His mouth worked, gobbling words she didn’t bother to hear, and her right hand pressed the muzzle against his forehead and began to squeeze.

Someone else’s hands locked on her forearm, shoving frantically, and the sharp, spiteful explosion of a pulser dart pocked the mess hall roof as her pistol whined. She wrenched at the hands on her arm, trying to throw whoever it was off, but they clung desperately, and someone was shouting in her ear.

More voices shouted, more hands joined the ones on her arm, dragging her back from Williams while the man sagged to his knees, retching and weeping in terror, and she fought madly against them all. But she couldn’t wrench free, and she went to her own knees as someone snatched the pistol from her grip and someone else gripped her head and forced it around.

“Skipper! Skipper, you can’t!” Scotty Tremaine half-sobbed, holding her face between his hands while tears ran down his cheeks. “Please, Skipper! You can’t do this—not without a trial!”

She stared at him, her detached mind wondering what a trial had to do with anything, and he shook her gently.
“Please, Skipper. If you shoot a prisoner without a trial the Navy—" He drew a deep breath. “You can’t, Ma’am, however much he deserves it.”

“No, she can’t,” a voice like frozen helium said, and a trace of sanity came back into Honor’s expression as she saw Admiral Matthews. “I came as soon as I heard, Captain,” he spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he sensed the need to break through to her, “but your lieutenant’s right. You can’t kill him.” She stared deep into his eyes, and something inside her eased as she saw the agony and shame—and fury—in his soul.

“But?” she didn’t recognize her own voice, and Matthews’ mouth twisted in contemptuous hate as he glared down at the sobbing Masadan captain.

“But I can. Not without a trial. He’ll have one, I assure you, and so will all the animals he turned loose on your people. They’ll be scrupulously, completely fair—and as soon as they’re over, this sick, sadistic piece of garbage and all the others responsible will be hanged like the scum they are.” He met her eye levelly, and his icy voice was soft.

“I swear that to you, Captain, on the honor of the Grayson Navy.”