divided, the president of the court accepts the decision of the court's other members without casting a vote,' he said for the record. 'It is now the responsibility of this court to recommend a sentence to Admiral Harrington, however. The UCC provides for up to twenty-five years in prison for second-degree rape, fifty years for kidnapping, and two for abuse of official authority for personal advantage. By my math, that means Citizen Lieutenant Mangrum is theoretically subject to seventy-seven T-years at hard labor. To impose such a sentence, however, will require his return to Alliance space with us at such time as we leave the planet.'
He didn't add 'assuming we can leave the planet,' but the other four heard it anyway, and he smiled wryly. Then he looked back at Hurston.
'Commander Hurston, what is your recommendation?'
'The maximum penalty—seventy-five T-years without possibility of parole,' Hurston said harshly.
'Captain Gonsalves?'
'The maximum,' she agreed, her expression murderous. 'God knows the bastard has it coming... and I only wish we could leave him here on Hell to serve it!'
That wasn't exactly proper etiquette or procedure, but McKeon had no intention of pointing it out. He simply nodded and turned to Gaston Simmons.
'Commodore Simmons?'
'The same.' His voice was hammered iron, even colder than Gonsalves', and McKeon looked at Longmont.
'Citizen Admiral Longmont?'
'I concur with the recommendations of my fellows,' she said flatly.
'And so also says the president of the court,' McKeon told them. 'The vote being unanimous, this court will recommend to Admiral Harrington that Citizen Lieutenant Kenneth Mangrum be kept in close confinement for the duration of our time on Hell, to be returned with us to Alliance space, there to serve the full term of his sentence. Is there any exception to or disagreement with the court's statement of its recommendation for the record?'
No one spoke, and he nodded one last time, then sighed and let his shoulders slump.
'Well, that's one more out of the way,' he said in a much less formal tone, and rubbed his face with both hands. 'God, will I be glad when this is finally over!'
'I'm sure all of us will be, Commodore,' Longmont told him, then shook her head sadly and looked at the other three members of the court. 'I'm sorry we couldn't find the evidence to let me agree to hang him,' she said. 'But—'
'Don't be sorry, Sabrina!' Somewhat to McKeon's surprise, it was Simmons, interrupting the Havenite before she could finish. 'I think he did it, Cynthia and Albert and Alistair all think he did it, and you think he did it. But you were right. We can't prove it, and if we ever start rubber-stamping execution orders, we'll be just as bad as the people we're hanging.' He smiled sourly as Longmont raised an eyebrow at him, and then shrugged. 'I know. I voted guilty. And in this case, I would cheerfully have hanged him if the rest of you had gone along, holes in the evidence or not. I would've slept soundly tonight, too. But that's why there's more than one person sitting on this court, and I was the one who held out against hanging Citizen Major Younce last week. As long as every one of us votes his or her conscience every time, then we've done both the best—and the least—we can do under the circumstances.'
'You know,' Longmont said after a moment, 'it's really a pity we're on different sides. If the politicians— especially mine—would just get the hell out of the way and let the five of us deal with it, we could hammer out a peace settlement and end this whole damned war in a week.'
'I wouldn't bet on that, Citizen Admiral,' McKeon told her wryly. 'Compared to the war, the things we're looking at here are pretty cut and dried. At least we've all agreed whose rules we're going to use as the basis for our verdicts! But when we started hammering away at each other about things like who owns which planets... well—'
He shrugged, and Longmont gave a snort of half-bitter, half-amused laughter.
'It's not polite to go around destroying a lady's daydreams, Commodore!'
'My commission says I'm an officer and a gentlemen, Ma'am; it never said I was a polite gentlemen!' The citizen admiral chuckled appreciatively, and McKeon grinned at her. 'And however unlikely I may think it is that we could negotiate an end of the war, I'd much rather hammer away at you with words than laserheads any day, Citizen Admiral!'
'Amen to that,' Commodore Simmons said fervently, then pushed his chair back. 'And given that we've just concluded our judicial duties for the day, I move that we adjourn, deliver our verdict and recommendations to Admiral Harrington, and then go find a nice, thick steak and a good beer. Takers?'
'Me, for one' Longmont told him. 'Assuming that an unregenerate Peep is welcome in your company, of course?'
'This particular unregenerate Peep is welcome anytime,' Simmons said graciously. 'As long as she agrees to lose at darts after supper, that is!'
'Of course I'll agree to lose,' Longmont promised. 'Of course, I am an unregenerate Peep, servant of an order which you all insist is corrupt and venal.'
'Are you saying your agreement would be a lie?' Simmons demanded.
'Of course not,' the Citizen Admiral said sweetly. 'I'm simply saying that despite Commodore McKeon's rudeness where my dreams were concerned, I would never even contemplate damaging our close working relationship by overturning your concepts of proper Peep-like behavior.' She smiled. 'And, of course,' she added, 'the loser does get to buy the beer. Coming, Commodore?'
Chapter Forty
The harsh buzzer woke her. Nimitz complained sleepily as she sat up, and she didn't blame him. They'd just gotten to sleep, but as she always seemed to do in the morning, she'd forgotten she was missing an arm. She woke with the instant awareness—mostly—that forty years of naval service had trained into her, only to try to push herself upright with two hands, not one, and overbalance. The sheets half-wrapped around her, spilling the 'cat over onto his back, and she felt his drowsy indignation as he opened one eye. It glinted like a lost emerald in the reflected light flashing from atop the bedside com unit, and she sent him a silent apology and reached for the acceptance key. The accusing emerald blinked, and then its neighbor opened and a slightly less sleepy sense of amused forgiveness came back to her.
She found the key and pressed it, accepting the call audio-only, then ran her hand over her tousled hair.
'Yes?' Her voice came out clogged with sleep, and she cleared her throat.
'Sorry to disturb you, Admiral, but this is Commander Phillips,' a soprano voice said, and Honor felt her pulse stir as she registered the tension trying to crackle in its depths. She knew Phillips was one of Benson's watch officers, but there were over five thousand ex-prisoners on Styx now. She'd been too busy with her own duties— and especially the courts-martial—to pay as much attention as she would have liked to other matters, and she wasn't certain exactly which watch slot Phillips held.
'Captain Benson instructed me to alert you,' the commander went on, then paused as if to await her reaction.
'Alert me to what, precisely, Commander?' she asked a bit more testily than was her wont.
'Sorry, Ma'am,' Phillips said in a chastened tone. 'I didn't mean to sound obscure. I'm the XO on Captain Benson's watch, and she asked me to tell you that the sensor net's picked up a hyper footprint at roughly twenty- one light-minutes.'
Honor stiffened, and Nimitz rolled over and heaved himself upright in the tangled bedclothes beside her. Her gaze dropped to him again as he reached out and touched her thigh with a wiry true-hand, and his emotions reached out to hers as well, meeting her sudden tension head-on.
'I see,' she told Phillips after only the briefest pause, her voice calm. 'How long ago did they arrive? And has the challenge been transmitted?'
