Mission of Honor

falling—is that if it turns out he was right, his superiors are even more strongly motivated to punish him. The last thing they want is to ask the advice of someone who's told them they were idiots after the universe demonstrates they really were idiots. That's why it's important you stay clear of this. When the crap finally hits the fan, you'll be the one who had access to all of my notes and my reports, who's in the best position to be their 'expert witness' on that basis, but who hasn't been pissing them off for as long as they can remember.'

'It's not right,' she protested quietly.

'So?' Teague had seen lemons less tart than al-Fanudahi's smile. 'You were under the impression someone ever guaranteed life was fair?'

'No, but . . . .'

Her voice trailed off, and she gave her head an unwilling little toss of understanding. Not agreement , really, but of acceptance.

'Well, now that that's settled,' al-Fanudahi said more briskly, 'I was wondering if you'd had any more thoughts on that question of mine about the difference between their missile pods and tube-launched missiles?'

'About the additional drive system, you mean?'

'Yeah. Or even about the additional drive systems , plural.'

'Daud, I'm on your side here, remember, and I'm willing to grant you that they might be able to squeeze one more drive into a missile body they could shoehorn into a pod, but even I don't see how they could've put in three of the damned things!'

'Don't forget our esteemed colleagues are still arguing they couldn't fit in even two of them,' al-Fanudahi retorted, eye a-gleam with combined mischief, provocation, and genuine concern. 'If they're wrong about that, then why couldn't you be wrong about drive system number three?'

'Because,' she replied with awful patience, 'there are physical limits not even Manties can get around. Besides—'

Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi leaned his shoulders against the wall of her cubicle and smiled as he prepared to stretch the parameters of her mind once again.

* * *

Aldona Anisimovna walked briskly down the sumptuously decorated hallway. It wasn't the first time she'd made this walk, but this time she was unaccompanied by the agitated butterflies which had polkaed around her midsection before. And not just because Kyrillos Taliadoros, her personal enhanced bodyguard, walked quietly behind her. His presence was one sign of how monumentally her universe had changed in the last six T-months, yet it was hardly the only one.

Then again, everyone else's universe is about to change, too, isn't it? she thought as they neared their destination.And they don't even know it.

On the other hand, neither had she on that day six T-months ago when she and Isabel Bardasano walked into Albrecht Detweiler's office and Anisimovna, for the first time in her life, learned the real truth.

They reached the door at the end of the hall, and it slid open at their approach. Another man, who looked like a cousin of Taliadoros' (because, after all, he was one), considered them gravely for a moment, then stepped aside with a gracious little half-bow.

Anisimovna nodded back, but the true focus of her attention was the man sitting behind the large office's desk. He was tall, with strong features, and the two younger men sitting at the opposite ends of his desk looked a great deal like him. Not surprisingly.

'Aldona!' Albrecht Detweiler smiled at her, standing behind the desk and holding out his hand. 'I trust you had a pleasant voyage home?'

'Yes, thank you, Albrecht.' She shook his hand. 'Captain Maddox took excellent care of us, and Bolide is a perfectly wonderful yacht. And'—she rolled her eyes drolly at him—'so speedy .'

Detweiler chuckled appreciatively, released her hand, and nodded at the chair in front of his desk. Taliadoros and Detweiler's own bodyguard busied themselves pouring out cups of coffee with the same deftness they brought to certain more physical aspects of their duties. Then they withdrew, leaving her with Albrecht and his two sons.

'I'm glad you appreciateBolide 's speed, Aldona.' Benjamin Detweiler set his cup back on its saucer and smiled slightly at her. 'And we appreciate your using it to get home this quickly.'

Anisimovna nodded in acknowledgment. The 'streak drive' was yet another thing she hadn't known anything about six months ago. Nor, to be frank, was it something she would have expected out of Mesan researchers. Like most of the rest of the galaxy, although for rather different reasons, she'd been inclined to think of her home world's R&D community primarily in terms of biological research. Intellectually, she'd known better than most of humanity that the planet of Mesa's scientific and academic communities had never restricted themselves solely to genetics and the biosciences. But even for her, those aspects of Mesa had been far more visible, the things that defined Mesa, just as they defined Beowulf.

Well, if it surprised me, I imagine that's a pretty good indication of just how big a surprise it's going to be for everyone else, too , she thought dryly. Which is going to be a very good thing over the next few years .

The streak drive represented a fundamental advance in interstellar travel, and there was no indication anyone else was even close to duplicating it. For centuries, the theta bands had represented an inviolable ceiling for hyper- capable ships. Everyone had known it was theoretically possible to go even higher, attain a still higher apparent normal-space velocity, yet no one had ever managed to design a ship which could crack the iota wall and survive. Incredible amounts of research had been invested in efforts to do just that, especially in the earlier days of hyper travel, but with a uniform lack of success. In the last few centuries, efforts to beat the iota barrier had waned, until the goal had been pretty much abandoned as one of those theoretically possible but practically unobtainable concepts.

But the Mesan Alignment hadn't abandoned it, and finally, after the better part of a hundred T-years of dogged research, they'd found the answer. It was, in many ways, a brute force approach, and it wouldn't have been possible even now without relatively recent advances (whose potential no one else seemed to have noticed) in related fields. And even with those other advances, it had almost doubled the size of conventional hyper generators. But it worked. Indeed, they'd broken not simply the iota wall, but the kappa wall, as well. Which meant the voyage from New Tuscany to Mesa, which would have taken anyone else the next best thing to forty-five T-days, had taken Anisimovna less than thirty-one.

'Now,' Albrecht said, drawing her attention back to him, 'Benjamin, Collin, and I have skimmed your report. We'd like to hear it directly from you, though.'

'Of course,' she replied, 'but—' She paused, then gave her head a tiny shake. 'Excuse me, Albrecht, but I actually expected to be making this report to Isabel.'

'I'm afraid that won't be possible.' It wasn't Albrecht who answered her; it was Collin, and his voice was far harder and harsher than Albrecht's or Benjamin's had been. She looked at him, and he gave a sharp, angry shrug. 'Isabel's dead, Aldona. She was killed about three months ago . . . along with everyone else in the Gamma Center at the time.'

Anisimovna's eyes widened in shock. Despite her recent admission to the Mesan Alignment's innermost circles, she still had only the vaguest notion of what sort of research had been carried on in the Alignment's various satellite centers. The only thing she'd known about the Gamma Center was that, unlike most of the others, it was right here in the Mesa System . . . which implied it was also more important than most.

'May I ask what happened?'

She more than half expected him to tell her no, since she presumably had no operational need to know. But Isabel had become more than just another of her professional colleagues, and Collin surprised her.

'We still don't have all the pieces, actually,' he admitted. 'In fact, we never will. We do know someone activated the self-destruct security protocols, and who it was. We're still guessing at some of the events leading up to that, but given that Isabel was on her way to take him into custody, we're pretty sure why he activated them.'