OK, one more this week, and a little off-beat, since I do not know if it from the MWW or Bureau 6. I'll let you decide.
From House of Steel, the story behind the Second winner of the Medal of Valor (Edward Saganami was the first) and if RFC ever wants to write this short story....
...Returned to fleet duty in 1700 PD and promoted to Rear Admiral of the Red in 1705, D’Orville was dispatched with a small but powerful squadron to the Ingeborg System in 1710, in response to a request from the Terre Haute System government. Terre Haute had received reports that the current Ingeborg regime was developing weaponized nanotech which it intended to employ against Terre Haute.
D’Orville proceeded to Ingeborg, where the authorities initially denied any interest in nanotech research. D’Orville declined to believe them and pressed politely, but very firmly, for a face-to-face meeting with Ingeborg System President for Life Adrian Lipsky. After repeated attempts to delay, Lipsky agreed to meet with her aboard Ingeborg Alpha, the largest of the star system’s three artificial habitats.
Unknown to D’Orville, the laboratory in which the weapon was being developed had lost containment, and the weapon had already contaminated and virtually depopulated the orbital habitat which had contained it, killing over 350,000 people. President for Life Lipsky, who had no intention of admitting that fact to D’Orville (primarily for fear the Solarian League might construe the development of an obviously genocidal weapon as a violation of the Eridani Edict), hoped to meet with D’Orville, convince her that Terre Haute’s fears had been misplaced, send her on her way, and then arrange a plausible “accident” to destroy the contaminated habitat and any evidence of his government’s actions.
Unfortunately for Lipsky, Ingeborg Alpha had also been contaminated, although that fact became evident only after D’Orville and her security detachment had boarded the habitat to meet with the system president. Lipsky immediately attempted to flee the habitat, but was prevented by D’Orville, who took command of the frantic effort to rescue as many of Ingeborg Alpha’s two million plus inhabitants as possible. Although urged by her flag captain to evacuate herself, she remained personally on-station, using her own fleet personnel, small craft, and every available civilian Ingeborgian vessel to evacuate personnel from the path of the nano weapon while simultaneously coordinating the effort to contain and confine the contagion.
Approximately two thirds of Ingeborg Alpha’s personnel had been removed from the habitat when the nanotech breached the final firewall and containment failed. D’Orville’s final message to her flag captain was to destroy the entire habitat with a saturation nuclear strike to ensure the total destruction of the nano weapon. For her rescue of 1.4 million Ingeborgian civilians at the cost of her own life, Ellen D’Orville became the second recipient of the Parliamentary Medal of Valor.