The Honor of the Qween

they hope they can stall us long enough for their other Havenite ship to return and rescue them.'

'Or at least long enough to leave Grayson uncovered against her,' Honor agreed. She looked at Venizelos, then back at Matthews. 'None of our prisoners are able—or willing—to tell us exactly what their other ship is, Admiral. On the other hand, many of them seem to have a rather disturbing confidence that, whatever she is, she's a match for all of us.'

'I know.' Matthews' mouth pursed in distaste for his next suggestion, but it had to be made. 'Under the circumstances, I'm afraid we have little choice. I know we need information, but we have neither the time nor, speaking for Grayson, the means for a ground attack. If they won't surrender, our only options are to let the base wither until we can come back with a proper ground force, or else take it out from orbit and hope some of the prisoners we've already got prove more communicative with time.'

'I'm afraid we have a problem there,' Honor said carefully. 'In fact, that's why I asked you to come aboard, Sir. According to one of our prisoners, there are survivors from Madrigal down there.'

'Are you serious?!' Matthews jerked upright in his chair, then waved a hand quickly. 'No, of course you are.' He bit his lip. 'That does change things, Captain Harrington. Of course we can't just bombard the base now!'

'Thank you, Sir,' Honor said quietly. 'I appreciate that.'

'Captain, Madrigal saved my ship at the cost of her own life, and only the damage she did the Masadans prevented them from conquering or bombarding my planet before your own return. If any of her people are still alive down there, Grayson will do everything in its power to get them out alive.' He paused and frowned. 'And given the Masadans' intransigence, we'd better get them out as quickly as we can, too.'

Honor nodded. Commander Brentworth had told her the admiral would react in just that way, but it was a vast relief to hear it.

'The problem, Sir, is that they have a lot more men down there than we have up here.'

'I'm sure of that,' Matthews agreed, plucking at his lower lip. 'Unlike yours, none of our ships carry Marine complements, but we do have some smallarms aboard.'

'Yes, Sir. We, however, as you've just pointed out, do have Marines, and I've been discussing the best way to employ them with Major Ramirez. With your permission, I'll ask him to share our conclusions with you.'

'Of course.' Matthews turned to the Manticoran major, and Ramirez cleared his throat.

'Basically, Admiral, I have three companies aboard Fearless.' Ramirez's accent differed from most of the Manticorans Matthews had heard, with liquid consonants that were oddly musical in such a massive man. 'Apollo has another company embarked, although they suffered about twenty casualties in the engagement. That gives me the better part of a battalion, including just over a company's worth of battle armor. Our best current estimates suggest the Masadan base is much larger than we'd originally thought, with a complement of about seven thousand men. How many of those have the training and equipment to be considered combat effective is an unknown, but the total numbers give them a considerable edge over our own five hundred troopers.

'I doubt any pure Masadan ground force could stand up to our battle armor, but the Peeps may have given them modern weapons, and three-quarters of my people would be in skin suits. In this kind of environment—' He shrugged, and Matthews nodded.

'We also lack any detailed plans of the base itself,' Ramirez went on. 'The best we've been able to get from prisoner interrogation is some idea of how the immediate entry areas are laid out and where the blast doors are located. But the Captain tells me tying ourselves down in methodical operations isn't an acceptable option—that we can't allow ourselves to be drawn away from Grayson for any length of time—and we also have reason to believe our people down there are in danger if we leave them in Masadan hands. That rules out probing the defenses to develop tactical information.

'Bearing all that in mind, the best plan I can come up with is one the tactics instructors back home would bust me to civilian for suggesting. Visual and radar mapping of the base have identified three main entry points, including the hangars for their small craft. I intend to pick one of those entries—the hangar area—and use brute force to blast my way inside, then punch right through anything in front of us and just keep going until we find our people, the central control room, or the power plant. Finding the prisoners would be the best-case option and allow us to pull straight back out. Failing that, the garrison will have no choice but to surrender once we control their life-support systems—or put ourselves in a position to shut them down by blowing their reactors. I hope.'

'I see.' Matthews looked from Ramirez to Harrington and back again. 'How can we assist you, Major?'

'I realize your people aren't trained Marines, Admiral, and your vac suits are a lot more fragile than Marine skin suits.' Matthews' mouth quirked at Ramirez's diplomatic tone. 'Because of that, using them to reinforce my Marines would represent an unwarrantable risk to your personnel, but you do have quite a large number of men, and I'd like to use them for a diversion.'

'A diversion?'

'Yes, Sir. What I'd like to do is use your pinnaces and shuttles to mount a big, noisy mock attack on both of the other main entry points. Our own pinnaces are designed for ground assaults, among other things, and two of them will lay in supporting fire to make your `attacks' as convincing as possible and persuade the defenders to concentrate their combat forces against you. Our attack will go in fifteen minutes after you begin landing operations to give them time to deploy against you. By the time they start redeploying against us, we ought to be inside the base, where the close confines will make our battle armor even more effective and allow me to deploy my skin suits behind them.'

'I see.' Matthews sucked his teeth for a moment, then grinned. 'Some of my men are going to be irked, Major. We did fairly well against the Faithful in several boarding actions in the last war, and the notion that they're more or less holding your coats is going to upset them. But I think we can do it—and you're right about the difference in our combat capabilities.'

He nodded again, but then he frowned.

'At the same time, Captain Harrington, this is going to be time-critical. Not only do we have to worry about the other Havenite's return, but any of your people being held down there aren't going to have vac suits. If the fighting depressurizes their area, they'll be killed. And if it occurs to the Masadans to use them against you as hostages—' His expression was grim.

'Agreed, Sir,' Honor said quietly, 'but your freighters have deployed our recon drones, and Troubadour and Apollo still have the gravitic sensors to read their transmissions. Should the other Peep return, we should have enough warning to get under way and intercept him with Fearless and Troubadour, particularly since he's most likely to be headed for Blackbird, anyway. As for the threat to Madrigal's survivors,' the living side of her face hardened, 'I'm very much afraid it's lower than the danger to them if we don't go in. Our information on their treatment is limited but disquieting. Under the circumstances, any reasonable risk to get them out quickly has to be considered acceptable. And, despite Major Ramirez's deprecation of his battle plan, I have great faith in him and in his people.' She met Matthews' eyes squarely. 'Given the information we have, I believe this is the very best we can do. I'd like your permission to try it.'

'My permission?' Matthews smiled almost sadly. 'Of course you have my permission—and my prayers for your success.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CAPTAIN OF THE FAITHFUL WILLIAMS PACED back and forth across the command room and gnawed his lower lip. He'd been picked for this post in no small part for his piety—now that very piety fanned his fury at the disaster wreaked by a woman. And violently though he tried to deny it, there was fear in his fury. Fear for himself and for God's Work. The Apostate admiral whoring for the Manticoran bitch had stopped