Honor Bound

control room, marked in Cyrillic lettering, and through the window set in that door to an old-fashioned looking bank of readouts and controls, still lit by emergency battery power. “We are going to attempt to burn through… shit!”

Landers’ exclamation was at a face that suddenly appeared in the window, dark-haired and wild-eyed, with a bushy beard and cracked, chapped lips. He was saying something, but they couldn’t hear him with him behind the thick transplas and them in a vacuum.

“We have a survivor, Sheridan,” Landers reported, unnecessarily.

“Set up a temporary airlock and get him out of there, Commander,” Patel ordered quickly. “Get him into a rescue bubble and get him over here ASAP. But be cautious opening that door… it might be booby-trapped.”

“Roger that, sir,” Landers confirmed, then turned to give the orders to set up the temporary airlock.

Patel grinned at McKay. “Well, there you go, Colonel… you wanted a live prisoner. Now you’re going to have one.”

“Aye, sir,” McKay nodded, trying to contain his excitement. “Sir, Podbyrin’s back on the Decatur. I need him here when I interrogate this guy. He might know him.”

“By all means, Colonel, we’ll send a shuttle for him.” Patel raised an eyebrow with amusement. “You and Podbyrin and an interrogation in my brig… it’ll be just like old times. Hopefully this time we won’t have to drug him.”

“Do you know him?”

D’mitry Podbyrin stared at the viewscreen hooked to a camera in the security detention cell, at the image of the Protectorate crewman secured to a padded couch via straps at his wrists, chest and calves. The man looked much healthier now than the first time McKay had seen him. He’d been severely dehydrated and hadn’t had anything to eat in days, not to mention the beginnings of anoxia and hypothermia as the life support started to fail in the auxiliary control room.

After a few days in sick bay, the Russian officer was alert and much less grateful than he’d been shortly after being rescued.

“I…,” Podbyrin began, and then closed his mouth, shaking his head. “I’m not sure. I think I have seen him before, but I do not know him, or remember his name.” He shrugged. “You must understand, there were hundreds of men and women, enlisted and officers, even at the beginning. And there were some births over the years, of course.”

The old man’s eyes glazed over slightly, the way they did when he thought back through the long decades he’d been alive; McKay had seen it before when he’d debriefed the Colonel after the war. “We didn’t have that many women… it was perhaps three to one. And the planet we found… the background radiation there was high. Some of the women were made infertile, and the ones who did get pregnant sometimes miscarried. By the time we could make settlements on other worlds, there were few women who could still carry a child to term and few men who were still capable of fathering one. Still, some were… are, I suppose… born every year. So there are probably a few thousand adults at least, even after the war, and some were always other places while I was on Novoye Rodina. I might have seen this man at one time or another, but I do not remember him.”

“Damn,” McKay said mildly. “Oh well, it was just a thought.” He fell silent for a moment, considering the situation. “Okay, it’s probably better that you aren’t in the room then. You may not know him, but he probably knows about you, if Antonov blames you for his defeat. You monitor the interview from in here… you can talk to me through my ear bud, give me advice. Is that all right with you?”

“It is better that I not be in there,” Podbyrin agreed, still staring at the Russian officer on the screen. McKay could see a deep sadness in the man’s eyes, hear a weariness in his voice. It had been there ever since Podbyrin had been forced to kill the Russian officer on Peboan. He couldn’t say for sure, but drawing on the past few years of learning to read people, McKay guessed it was the very final realization by the old man that he really could never go home again.

McKay left him in the main Security office and stepped out into the corridor. The Security section in the new cruisers like the Sheridan was in the rotational drum, giving them faux gravity even when they weren’t under acceleration. McKay wasn’t sure why it had been put there, but at the moment he appreciated it.

The guard outside the holding room opened the door for him and McKay entered, trying to look casual, business-like and unconcerned. The prisoner glanced at him furtively, then looked straight ahead, trying not to meet his eyes. The man was sweating and uncomfortable… the room was being kept warm and humid and not by accident.

”Kak tebya zovut?” McKay asked him in Russian. What’s your name? He’d learned the language quite fluently over the last few years, just in case they ever came across the Protectorate again.

The Russian opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, visibly debating with himself whether he should answer. After a moment, he shrugged. “Konstantin.”

“Hello, Konstantin,” McKay smiled as he went on in Russian, sitting down across from the man. “I’m Jason. Are you being treated well?”

“Yes,” the man said with a shrug… or as much of a shrug as he could give with a strap across his chest and his wrists shackled to the arms of his chair. “They have given me food and water. And new clothes,” he added, glancing at the dark blue utility coveralls he was wearing.

“Good,” McKay nodded. “I am going to be honest with you, Konstantin. I’m in here with you because we want to know why your ships and your troops attacked us. After the war, after your General Antonov tried to take Earth and lost, we let you alone, didn’t we?”

“You couldn’t find us!” Konstantin snorted. “The General returned and told us how he’d been betrayed by that miserable bastard Podbyrin, but that he had managed to escape his treachery and leave you all with your thumbs up your ass!”

“I’m afraid General Antonov lied to you, Konstantin,” McKay said gently. “He wasn’t betrayed. We captured Colonel Podbyrin’s ship by chance as it came through the wormhole in the asteroid belt and we interrogated him using truth drugs. He had no choice at all. And General Antonov was able to get away because he ran while his officers were being slaughtered and his ships destroyed. Do you know how I know this, Konstantin?” At the man’s shaking head, McKay went on. “Because I was on his flagship during that battle. I was with my squad and two platoons of Republic Marines. We battled your officers on the bridge of that ship, Lieutenant Dubronov and Matviyenko and the others…” Konstantin’s eyes went wide at the names… he knew the men. “And the only reason that your General was able to get away was that we were kept busy killing them and disabling the ship. He even had his cloned toy woman fight us to save himself… she lured in a Sergeant and then killed him and herself with a grenade.”

At the mention of the cloned woman Antonov had kept as a companion, Konstantin’s mouth dropped open. This guy must suck at poker, McKay thought.

“So, Konstantin, I know your General. I know how he will use others to do his dirty work while he stays safe and leads from the rear. And here we are. You and I, front line soldiers-you on an attack ship, me on the planet fighting your biomechanical clone troops. And your General is nowhere to be found. You are going to tell me everything you know about the wormholes and how they’re used, Konstantin; and you are going to tell me everything you know about Antonov’s plans and why this system is important to him.” The Russian began to protest but McKay held up a hand. “You will either tell me because you come to understand that General Antonov is a cowardly, evil man who will lead your people to their deaths as he led his whole nation and nearly the whole world to their deaths… or you will tell me because we will pump you full of psychoactive drugs and you’ll have no choice.”

“Why do you bother to tell me this?” Konstantin wanted to know. “Why not just give me the drugs?”

McKay sighed with sad resignation. “Because, Konstantin… I wanted to give you the choice. The drugs won’t injure you… hell, you won’t even remember that you talked. But afterward, you’ll feel like something has been taken from you, something you can’t get back. You seem like a decent man. I’d rather give you the chance to talk to me willingly first.”

“Even if I believed you,” Konstantin said quietly, with little conviction and a great deal of hopelessness, “I