Honor Bound

taken over the course of the last few days of action and Josh because he figured it would be boring and would rather be “trolling for Sheilas on the beaches back home.”

Tanya Manning was there, newly promoted and already wearing a medal of her own, though not the Medal of Valor. Tom had spoken so highly of her, McKay thought he wanted to give her Vinnie’s job, but she’d have to settle for Sean Watanabe’s instead. Beside her were newly-promoted Admiral Minishimi and Captains Pirelli and Gianeto, all of them newly decorated as well… and all just out of the hospital. Joyce Minishimi’s husband stood next to her, a tall, athletic man with long, wavy dark hair and a narrow face made broader by the smile he couldn’t contain.

And then there was the dark-haired teenage boy in the dress uniform of an Academy cadet, a cased Medal of Valor and a folded Republic flag grasped tightly in his hands, his dark eyes brimming with tears waiting to be shed.

“He looks so much like his father,” McKay said softly, reaching over to switch off the NewsNet broadcast.

“You should have been getting a medal,” President O’Keefe commented, sipping from a glass of Scotch.

McKay shook his head, sitting on the corner of the desk in the President’s private office. It was just the two of them now: Shannon was checking in on Valerie and her daughter. “Too much of what I did wouldn’t be wise to make public yet,” he said. His mouth turned up into a smile. “Besides, I already have a Medal of Valor and it’s considered bad taste to wear two at once.”

“Hell, I should give you two more just for bringing home that map of the wormholes and the technique for opening them up,” O’Keefe snorted. “You may not know it, but you might have just saved the Republic economy.” He sighed. “Not that it’s going to do me much good.”

“Is it bad?” McKay asked, feeling a jolt of sympathy for the man. What had happened under his watch wasn’t his fault and hadn’t been foreseeable, but that wouldn’t stop him from being blamed for it.

“I’m considering resigning the Presidency,” O’Keefe admitted, not meeting the other man’s eyes.

“I never thought you’d give up without a fight, sir,” McKay said, shaking his head.

“I’ve had a lot of fights, Jason,” he replied, downing the last of his Scotch in one gulp. “My fights got my wife killed, they got Glen killed, and they almost got my daughter and granddaughter killed… would have, if it weren’t for you. This job,” he shook his head, “this job just isn’t worth it.”

“Dominguez is dead,” McKay pointed out. “There would have to be a special election.”

“And I believe I know who will win that election,” O’Keefe touched a control on his desk and brought up another news report, this one showing the serious, heroic face of Gregory Jameson. “The press is really running with the story about him taking down Antonov.”

“No mention of Riordan or his role in all this, though,” McKay noted. “Whose doing is that?”

O’Keefe shrugged. “I was convinced by my advisors that it would do more harm than good to go after him. There are too many things we don’t want made public that would get out.”

“Sir, I understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, but I think you’re bowing out too early. There’s another layer to this onion. There’s just too much we don’t know yet.”

“That’ll be your job, Jason,” O’Keefe poured himself another glass and topped off McKay’s. They both picked up their drinks and O’Keefe raised his in a toast. “May you find the answers to all your mysteries.” They each took a sip and O’Keefe set his glass down with a sigh. “And may you have fewer regrets than I have.”

“We all have regrets, sir,” McKay said thoughtfully. He took another drink. “For one, I regret ever getting D’mitry Podbyrin involved in all this. He was happy where he was, and I got him killed.”

“He didn’t make it off the Sheridan?”

McKay shook his head. “We’ve accounted for all the survivors. It was a bit difficult, since the ship’s power surges were ejecting lifepods unoccupied and some of them reentered automatically, but there’s been no sign of him. He probably died when the ship’s fields intersected.”

“Then here’s to Colonel D’mitry Podbyrin.” O’Keefe raised his glass again. “He died doing the right thing.”

* * *

Colonel D’mitry Grigor’yevich Podbyrin sat quietly in a dark corner of the bar, half-watching the NewsNet broadcast of the awards ceremony in Reagan Plaza and half listening to the scattered murmurings from customers nursing their drinks.

It was so strange to hear Russian once again. He hadn’t been back to Earth since the War, but he would have thought it a dead language now: and it was, except for a few places. It so happened that Alaska was one of those places. Many Russian immigrants who had fled the Rodina during or after the War had settled here, and every city had a large minority population of Russian-speaking citizens.

It was fortuitous that his lifepod had landed on the bare tundra, and even more fortuitous that the first people he had come across after two days of wandering through the wilderness were Russian immigrants. Or perhaps it was fate…

Either way, Fairbanks was much more homelike than Loki had been.

Podbyrin saw the man approaching his booth and slid aside to give him room. Yuri was an older man, his face weathered and strong and his eyes as blue and cold as the Arctic sea.

“I have contacted our friends,” Yuri told him quietly. “They have sunk the lifepod in the ocean. There will be nothing to connect any of us to it, and they will never know you were on it.”

“I thank you for your help,” Podbyrin said earnestly. “I truly did not wish to return to exile. But I wonder… you do not do this just because I am Russian?”

“There are few enough of us left,” Yuri said, grinning frostily, “that we help whoever needs it. But yes, there is a special interest in you, particularly among the bratva.”

Podbyrin felt a chill run down his neck. Bratva… the brotherhood: it was a term used for various families in the Russian mafia back in his day. Apparently, the language wasn’t the only thing that had survived the War here.

“And why would they be interested in me?” he wanted to know. Or perhaps he didn’t, he wasn’t really certain.

“We are interested in certain information you might have,” Yuri said. Ah. “We” are interested, Podbyrin noted. That settled what Yuri’s stake in this was.

“Any information I have,” D’mitry Podbyrin pointed out, “the Republic military already has. They questioned me chemically and quite thoroughly.”

”Tovarisch,” Yuri assured him, patting him on the shoulder in friendly fashion, “there are things that you know that you don’t even know you know. Things that could be very useful to the General.”

“The General is dead,” Podbyrin said, taking a gulp of his drink to stave off a feeling that the room was closing in on him.

“No, my brother,” Yuri said, the look in his eyes utterly terrifying. “The General lives.”