Mission of Honor

Sphinxian accent—reported to Ingebrigtsen.

'You know what to do, Sly,' Ingebrigtsen told him.

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.' Jackson saluted her and Markiewicz, then turned to his own platoon sergeant and passed through Lindsay's people into the central shaft of each bank of lifts. They did not enter the lift cars , however. Instead, they sent the cars upward, overriding the automatic command to close the shaft doors behind them, and, as per their pre-mission orders, followed the cars up the shaft in their armor. Markiewicz didn't really expect anyone aboard Leeuwenhoek to be stupid enough to try anything, but if anyone was so suicidally inclined, he had no intention of offering his people up in neatly packaged, easily bushwhacked lots.

'All right, Aldonza,' Ingebrigtsen said over her com. 'Your turn.'

'Understood, Ma'am.'

Lieutenant Aldonza Navarro, Third Platoon's CO, had a more pronounced San Martin accent than Fariсas'. At a hundred and seventy-two centimeters, she was on the short side for most of the San Martinos Markiewicz had met, but there was nothing wrong with her efficiency, and Third Platoon quickly assembled in the boat bay.

Markiewicz, meanwhile, was monitoring his HUD, watching the icons of Jackson's Marines as they ascended the lift shafts. Jackson's second squad left its shaft at the 03 Deck lift doors. The lieutenant himself stayed with his first squad, leaving the shaft at the 02 Deck level. His second squad continued to the 01 Deck, and Markiewicz gave another mental nod as all three squads settled into position.

'Take the banks, Aldonza,' Ingebrigtsen instructed, and Third Platoon relieved Lindsay's people as the anchoring security element on the lift banks here in the boat bay. At the same time, First Platoon fell back in, and Ingebrigtsen nodded—in her case, physically—in approval.

'Ready to proceed, Sir,' she said formally, turning to Markiewicz.

'Very good, Captain.' Markiewicz smiled. 'Let's get this show on the road, then.'

'Aye, aye, Sir. Head them up-shaft, Hector.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am!' Lindsay acknowledged, and First Platoon started climbing into the shaft Jackson had used, with Ingebrigtsen, Fariсas, and Markiewicz trailing along behind.

This time, Markiewicz noted, Lieutenant Lindsay hadn't quite managed to keep his excitement out of his voice, but the major was inclined to cut the youngster a little slack. After all, his platoon had been chosen to accompany Markiewicz to Leeuwenhoek 's flag bridge to formally accept Admiral O'Cleary's personal surrender before the rest of his Marines began moving through the rest of the core hull to secure it. Which meant young Hector Lindsay was about to go into the Corps' history books as the first junior officer—very junior officer, in his case—of any star nation to command the squad which took a Solarian League Navy's flag officer's surrender on the flag deck of an SLN superdreadnought. Markiewicz wasn't exactly immune to the same awareness, which was one reason he couldn't justify taking Lindsay to task for it. At the same time, though, he wondered if Lindsay had figured out he'd drawn this particular assignment because he was the least experienced of Ingebrigtsen's platoon commanders? Navarro, with the most combat experience of all, had taken over the boat bay detachment because it constituted Markiewicz's reserve. If something went wrong and dropped them all into the crapper after all, he wanted somebody who'd been there and done that in charge of the force assigned to pull them all back out again.

I wonder if Luciana had the heart to explain that to Lindsay? he wondered. I know Ididn't!

* * *

Abigail Hearns took one more look around. The passageway immediately inboard from the emergency airlock was longer and a bit wider than it would have been in a Manticoran or Grayson-designed warship, but it looked rather cramped at the moment, with her entire boarding party and six counter-grav sleds of salvage and rescue gear packed into it. Other than that, about the best she could say was that it was still atmosphere tight. Only the emergency lighting was up, and close to a third of the lighting elements were dead. One of her engineering ratings had already determined that the backup hardwired emergency com system was down, but from the looks of things, that could just as easily have been due to lack of maintenance as to the damage Charles Babbage had suffered at Manticoran hands.

The ship—or, rather, the battered hulk which had once been a ship—was under an apparent gravity of about 1.2 g . The wreckage had been rotated perpendicular to its line of flight, putting the decks and deckheads back where they ought to be, and Tristram was playing tugboat to slow what was left of the Babbage down. In many ways, Abigail would have preferred to remain in microgravity. It would have made getting about faster and simpler, not to mention avoiding the stress the deceleration was putting on damaged structural members. And she was well aware that the deceleration might actually be life-threatening for survivors under some circumstances. Unfortunately, the wreck's velocity of almost eighteen thousand kilometers per second had already carried it past Flax. It was now hurtling across the inner system at roughly six percent of light-speed, bound for a fatal encounter with the gas giant Everest in just under twenty hours. It was extraordinarily unlikely, given Tenth Fleet's limited manpower, that the SAR parties would be able to completely search ships as mangled and torn as Babbage and her consorts in that time. Which meant they had to be slowed down somehow.

Tristram looked like a guppy tethered to a whale as she worked to decelerate Babbage 's wreckage, but there wouldn't have been any point using a larger, more powerful vessel. Tristram was could brake them at the current rate indefinitely, and they dared not apply any greater deceleration, for a lot of reasons. At this rate, it would take over fifteen T-days (and the next best thing to twelve light-hours) to actually stop them relative to the system primary, but it would also divert them well clear of any collisions with odds and ends of system real estate, which would be a very good thing from the SAR perspective.

Assuming anyone who maintained their internal systems as poorly as these people appeared to have had managed to survive to be rescued in the first place, of course.

Don't rush to conclusions , Abby, she reminded herself. This is strictly an emergency access way, and the lock's the only thing it leads to. Let's not decide all of their maintenance is as half-assed as it looks right here until we've actually seen it .

She told herself that rather firmly, and she knew she had a point. But she couldn't help reflecting on how any Manticoran or Grayson executive officer would react to something like this, even if it was 'only' an emergency access way. In fact, especially if it was 'only' an emergency access way. There was a reason things like that were provided when a ship was designed, after all, and when an emergency finally came along and bit your posterior, it was a little late to think about catching up on that overdue maintenance you'd really been meaning to get to sometime real soon now.

At least we're in, we're in one piece, and we're in solid com contact with the pinnace. Which means —

'All right, Matteo, let's go,' she said.

'Yes, Ma'am,' Lieutenant Gutierrez replied, then nodded to PO 1/c William MacFarlane, one of the noncoms to whom he'd issued another flechette gun. 'Lead 'em out, Bill.'

'Yes, Sir,' MacFarlane acknowledged in turn, and started cautiously down the poorly lit passage.

Three more ratings with flechette guns followed him, with Gutierrez behind them. The lieutenant and Bosun Musgrave had spent the better part of half an hour deciding which naval personnel should be trusted with things that went bang. MacFarlane and the other flechette-armed ratings—there were three more bringing up the rear— were the ones with actual combat experience or who had most recently qualified with the weapons. Everyone else carried at least a sidearm as regulations required, but Gutierrez had been bloodthirstily explicit when he explained what would happen to anyone other than his designated flechette gunners who dared to switch any weapon from 'safe' to 'fire' without his specific instructions to do so. Given the profoundly stupid things Abigail had seen people do with firearms, she heartily approved of her armsman's attitude.

Now the rest of the party followed MacFarlane to the airtight door at the end of the airlock access way, and Selma Wilkie, one of Lieutenant Fonzarelli's engineering techs, examined the controls.

'Power's down, Ma'am,' she reported to Abigail over the general net, then continued in a carefully expressionless voice. 'According to the telltales, there's standard pressure on the other side, though.'

Abigail heard someone snort contemptuously and shook her own head. They were inside the