Mission of Honor

'Is that an order, Admiral?' O'Cleary asked coldly.

'No, it is not,' Michelle replied, equally coldly, enunciating each word carefully. 'It is, however, a very strong suggestion , and I remind you our current conversation is being recorded. It can—and will be—produced at any inquiry which may result from your personnel's conduct—or ours—while your people are in our custody.'

Their eyes locked for several seconds. Then O'Cleary inhaled deeply.

'Very well. Your 'suggestion' is noted, and I'll speak to my people. Is there anything else?'

'Yes,' Michelle said, 'there is. As I'm sure you've already deduced for yourself, the combined manpower of my fleet is far inferior, numerically, to that of your own task force.' Not that I have any intention of admitting just how inferior , she added silently. 'That poses some obvious difficulties for my boarding parties—difficulties which might well provoke the sort of incident we've both just agreed should be avoided—and I've been giving some thought to ways those difficulties might be alleviated. By my staff's calculations, the combined small craft and escape pod capacity of your superdreadnoughts should suffice to remove approximately five thousand of your personnel from each ship.'

O'Cleary's face stiffened, and she began to open her mouth indignantly, but Michelle continued coldly.

'Before you say a word, Admiral. I advise you to consider your position carefully. As you've just acknowledged, interstellar law requires you to obey my lawful commands. I, on the other hand, am obligated to provide for the reasonable safety of your personnel as long as you and they do obey my lawful commands. The planet Flax is less than one million kilometers from your present position. That's well within the powered range of your life pods, even allowing a two hundred percent reserve for an unassisted landing. In short, removing your personnel from your vessels in the manner I've indicated poses no threat to life or limb, assuming you've properly maintained the equipment in question. As a consequence, I'm formally informing you that failure to comply with this instruction will be interpreted as a decision on your part to resume hostilities.'

She held the Solarian's eyes with her own, daring O'Cleary to call her bluff while silently praying the other woman was smart enough to realize it was no bluff at all. After a handful of tense heartbeats, it was O'Cleary's eyes which fell.

'I understand,' she grated.

'I'm glad to hear that.' Michelle gave her a tight smile. 'Once your small craft and life pods have separated from your starships, they'll proceed to Flax. There, they will enter orbit as Admiral Khumalo directs and comply with any additional instructions he may issue. They will not land except as he or I specifically order. We'll make every effort to get them planet-side as promptly as possible, consonant with Governor Medusa's ability to arrange accommodations. I'll guarantee that, under any circumstances, your life pods will be allowed to make planetfall well within their life-support endurance. If, however, any of your small craft or life pods fail to comply with instructions from myself, Admiral Khumalo, or our designated subordinates, they will be destroyed. I realize these arrangements are unusual, but so are our present circumstances. I've attempted to reach the best compromise I can between the security of my own people and the proper treatment of yours. I expect you to make it clear to all your personnel that we intend to treat them as decently and honorably as circumstances permit, but that any disobedience to our lawful instructions will be met promptly with whatever level of force—up to and including deadly force—we feel is required. Is that understood, as well?'

'Yes,' O'Cleary got out.

'Good. You may not believe this, Admiral, but I take no pleasure in issuing instructions I know must seem humiliating. Unfortunately, I have no choice. In fact, I'd be derelict in my responsibility to ensure the safety of your personnel if I failed to take the measures necessary to control the present situation and prevent the sort of escalation which would require me to use force to enforce the terms of your surrender.'

Michelle gazed into O'Cleary's eyes for another moment, hoping the Solarian could recognize the sincerity in her own expression. Then she nodded courteously.

'Gold Peak, clear,' she said, and turned back to the master plot with an inner sigh.

Truth be told, O'Cleary's attitude had been less belligerent than she'd feared. Unfortunately, that didn't mean it made Michelle happy. Nor, for that matter, did it mean the other officers and enlisted personnel aboard those surrendered ships were going to share O'Cleary's attitude.

* * *

'ETA three minutes, Ma'am,' the pinnace's flight engineer said.

'Thank you, PO Pettigrew,' Abigail Hearns replied, then stood and turned to face the armed, skinsuited men and women of her boarding party. Given the nature of their mission, there weren't a great many of them. In fact, there were a lot less of them than she wished she had.

'Three minutes, people,' she said, and saw expressions and shoulders tighten. 'Remember your briefings, and watch yourselves. We don't want any accidents—or incidents—and this sort of thing can be risky enough even aboard a friendly ship. So while we'd like to avoid any unpleasantness, we'd really like to have all of you back on board safe and sound, too.'

One or two people chuckled, and Abigail allowed herself an answering smile. Then she looked at the youthful midshipman in the seat beside hers. In some ways, young Walter Corbett reminded her of Gwen Archer, with the same red hair and green eyes. But Corbett had a truly monumental nose, compared to Archer's, and he was only nineteen and skinny as a rail, to boot. He was also possessed of a nervous energy that found the onerous task of sitting still difficult under normal conditions.

Today's conditions were anything but normal, however, and Corbett had sat almost unbreathing for the last ten minutes, his nose two centimeters from the viewport as he stared out it at the shattered behemoth waiting for them.

Abigail didn't blame him. Corbett's snotty cruise might have been less personally and directly terrifying (so far, at least) than her own aboard then-Captain Oversteegen's Gauntlet , but there'd been terror and cataclysm enough to go around. And, she thought, any temptation to smile fading as she remembered how the other ships of HMS Tristram 's division had been slaughtered by Josef Byng, he'd had ample demonstration of the risks attendant upon his chosen profession.

And he's about to get more , she reminded herself e grimly. Unlike young Corbett, she'd seen the insides of butchered starships before. Let's try and see to it he gets back aboard Tristram in one piece so he can at least profit from the experience that's about to provide so much nightmare fodder .

'Remember, Walt,' she hadn't spoken loudly, but Corbett's head twitched around like a startled rabbit's, 'you're a Queen's officer. I know you never expected to be doing anything like this on your snotty cruise. Well, I didn't expect everything that happened on my snotty cruise, either, as Lieutenant Gutierrez here could testify.'

She twitched her own head at the massive lieutenant sitting in the row of seats immediately behind the two of them. His Marine-style armored skinsuit was badged with the shoulder flash of the Owens Steadholder's Guard, not the Royal Manticoran Marines, and a well-used flechette gun rode the cargo rack above his head. A sound which might have been an understatement-spawned snort came from the general direction of the lieutenant in question, and a quick grin danced across Corbett's face in response. Clearly he'd heard all about then-Sergeant Matteo Gutierrez and Midshipwoman Hearns' adventures on the planet Refuge.

'You need to remember three things,' Abigail continued in a rather sterner tone. 'First, you are a Queen's officer. Second, any Sollies still alive in there '—she nodded towards the forward bulkhead, beyond which the wreck of SLNS Charles Babbage , one-time flagship of Battle Squadron 371, Solarian League Navy, waited for them—'have spent their entire careers thinking of themselves as the most powerful navy in the galaxy and of the Star Empire of Manticore—and it's navy—as an upstart little pipsqueak with delusions of grandeur. Third, we have no idea how many Solly personnel may still be alive aboard the Babbage or what kind of shape they may be in, but there are less than thirty people in our boarding party.'

She looked into his eyes steadily until he nodded, then continued.

'Right this minute, most of Babbage 's surviving crew are probably still in a state of shock. I don't know how long that's going to last, and from our perspective, it could be either a good thing or a bad