Mission of Honor

get them there!

Baroness Medusa was scrambling to find someplace to store them, at least temporarily. Unfortunately, no one on Flax had ever contemplated the absurd notion that the planet might suddenly have to absorb the better part of four hundred thousand 'visitors' like these, and the governor's options were limited. At the moment, Michelle knew, Medusa was inclining towards the same solution Michelle herself had experienced during her brief stint as a prisoner of war on Haven. Flax possessed several large, uninhabited tropical islands, many with the sorts of climates that evoked Pavlovian salivation from vacation resort developers. There was no housing on them at the moment, but food and water could be transported in, emergency sanitation arrangements could be made, and more permanent housing could be built once the immediate crisis had been dealt with.

No matter what we do, the Sollies're going to scream we've 'abused' their personnel by 'refusing' to house them properly and deliberately leaving them 'exposed to the elements,' she thought glumly. But all we can do is the best we can do, and hope the Admiralty can find someplace back home to keep them . . . not to mention the shipping to get them 'someplace back home!'

From the perspective of pure combat power, Crandall's task force wasn't even in the same league as Tenth Fleet. In fact, Michelle and her senior tacticians had been shocked by the totality of their own success. They'd deliberately adopted pessimistic assumptions about their ability to penetrate Solarian missile defenses, only to find their most optimistic estimations had fallen short of the reality. Despite everything, she'd been convinced it would take at least several salvos to inflict the sort of damage required to extort a surrender from someone as belligerent and obviously arrogant as Sandra Crandall. She'd certainly never anticipated that Terekhov's opening salvo would shatter its targets so completely.

She was fullyaware of the scale of her victory, andthat her firepower advantage was overwhelming. Yet from the perspective of securing its prizes, Tenth Fleet was in the position of someone who'd chartered a small boat to fish for near-tuna and landed a twelve-meter fluke-shark, instead. An impressive achievement, yes, but what did you do with the thing?

Well, I guess we're about to find out, aren't we? she thought.

At the moment, Terekhov's cruisers and Khumalo's superdreadnought flagship maintained their positions in orbit around Flax, just over eight hundred thousand kilometers from what remained of Crandall's wall of battle. The undamaged Solarian ships, plus their lighter consorts, were motionless relative to the planet, sidewalls and impeller wedges down in obedience to Michelle's orders, and all of her battlecruisers lay seven hundred and fifty thousand kilometers outside their current positions. That geometry put every hyper-capable Manticoran combatant beyond effective energy range of the Solarian SDs—a not so minor consideration, given the fact that any one of those superdreadnoughts could have annihilated Michelle's entire fleet if she'd been foolish enough to stray into the effective envelope of their massive energy batteries.

Which was the reason she had absolutely no intention of doing any such thing. It was also the reason both the Saganami-Cs and the Nikes were surrounded by veritable shoals of missile pods. Even if these superdreadnoughts' wedges had been active, it would have taken them six minutes at their maximum acceleration to reach energy range even of the battlecruisers, much less Terekhov's cruisers. Flight time for a Mark 23 over the same range would have been only twenty-four seconds. Based on what had already happened to Task Force 496, Michelle rather doubted it would survive the fifteen far larger salvos it would have received during those six minutes. More importantly, she felt confident the Sollies could do the same sums.

But even as she held her starships at a discreet distance, her LACs had maneuvered into position 'above' and 'below' the surviving Solarian warships. Since it had seemed likely the Sollies would have underestimated the capabilities of new-generation Manticoran light attack craft at least as badly as they'd underestimated those of current-generation Manticoran missiles, she'd arranged demonstration firings of the Shrike- Bs ' massive grasers. She wanted no misconceptions about what those capital ship-weight energy weapons could do to the unarmored topsides and bottoms of the Solarian ships-of-the-wall.

And while all that was being arranged, her destroyers—all five of them—had accelerated off in pursuit of the nine hulked SDs. Five old-style destroyers could easily have found the boarding parties for search-and-rescue operations aboard nine superdreadnoughts. Whether or not her five Rolands were up to the task was another question.

Now it was time to find out if they were . . . and if her other arrangements were going to work, after all.

For the Sollies' sake, she hoped they did.

'Put me through to O'Cleary, Bill,' she said without looking over her shoulder.

'Yes, Ma'am,' Lieutenant Commander Edwards replied.

Michelle gazed into the plot for another few seconds, then turned to face the master com display as a fair- haired, dark-eyed woman in the white uniform of the Solarian League Navy appeared upon it.

'Admiral O'Cleary,' Michelle said, and at this piddling range the light-speed transmission lag was barely two seconds.

'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.'