Echoes Of Honor

the total non sequitur.

'Your son,' Honor repeated in a flat voice. 'Tomas Santiago Ramirez.' Commodore Ramirez goggled at her, and she sighed. 'I know him quite well, Commodore. For that matter, I’ve met your wife, Rosario, and Elena and Josepha, as well.'

'Tomas—' he whispered, then blinked and shook himself. 'You know little Tomacito? '

'He’s hardly ‘little’ anymore,' Honor said dryly. 'In fact, he’s pretty close to your size. Shorter, but you and he both favor stone walls, don’t you? And he’s also a colonel in the Royal Manticoran Marines.'

'But—' Ramirez shook his head again, like a punch drunk fighter, and Honor chuckled sympathetically.

'Believe me, Sir. You can’t be more surprised to meet me than I am to meet you. Your family has believed you were dead ever since the Peeps took Trevor’s Star.'

'They got out?' Ramirez stared at her, his voice begging her to tell him they had. 'They reached Manticore? They—' His voice broke, and he scrubbed his face with his hands.

'They got out,' Honor said gently, 'and Tomas is one of my closest friends.' She grinned wryly. 'I suppose I should have realized you were the ‘Commodore Ramirez’s Captain Benson was talking about as soon as I heard the name. If Tomas were on this planet, I’m sure he’d have ended up in Camp Inferno, too. But who would’ve thought—?' She shook her head.

'But—' Ramirez stopped and sucked in an enormous breath, and Honor reached up and across to rest her hand on his shoulder. She squeezed for a moment, then nodded her head at the roots of the tree under—and in— which she had spent the day.

'Have a seat in my office here, and I’ll tell you all about it,' she invited.

Jesus Ramirez, Honor reflected an hour or so later, really was remarkably like his son. In many ways, Tomas Ramirez was one of the kindest and most easygoing men Honor had ever met, but not where the People’s Republic of Haven was concerned. Tomas had joined the Manticoran Marines for one reason only: he had believed war with the PRH was inevitable, and he had dedicated his life to the destruction of the People’s Republic and all its works with an unswerving devotion that sometimes seemed to verge just a bit too closely upon obsession for Honor’s peace of mind.

Now she knew where he’d gotten it from, she thought wryly, and leaned back against the tree trunk while Tomas’ father digested what she’d told him.

I wonder what the odds are? she thought once more. Ramirez beat the numbers badly enough just to survive to reach Hell, but that I should run into him like this—? She shook her head in the darkness which had fallen with the passing of the sun. On the other hand, I’ve always suspected God must have a very strange sense of humor. And if Ramirez was going to get here at all—and not get himself shot for making trouble—it was probably inevitable he’d wind up at Inferno. And given that 'troublemakers' are exactly what I need if I’m going to pull this off at all, I suppose it was equally inevitable that we should meet.

'All right, I understand what you want, Commodore Harrington,' the deep voice rumbled suddenly out of the darkness, 'but do you realize what will happen if you try this and fail?'

'We’ll all die,' Honor said quietly.

'Not just ‘die,’ Commodore,' Ramirez said flatly. 'If we’re lucky, they’ll shoot us during the fighting. If we’re un lucky, we’ll be ‘Kilkenny Camp Number Three.’'

'Kilkenny?' Honor repeated, and Ramirez laughed with no humor at all.

'That’s the Black Legs’ term for what happens when they stop sending in the food supplies,' he told her. 'They call it the ‘Kilkenny Cat’ method of provisioning. Don’t you know the Old Earth story?'

'Yes,' Honor said sickly. 'Yes, I do.'

'Well, they think it’s funny, anyway,' Ramirez said. 'But the important thing is for you to realize the stakes you’re playing for here, because if you—if we —blow it, every human being in this camp will pay the price right along with us.' He exhaled sharply in the darkness. 'It’s probably been just as well that was true, too,' he admitted. 'If it weren’t—if I’d only had to worry about what happened to me—I probably would have done something outstandingly stupid years ago. And then who would you have to try this outstandingly stupid trick with?'

A flicker of true humor drifted out of the night to her, carried over her link to Nimitz, and she smiled.

'It’s not all that stupid, Commodore,' she said.

'No... not if it works. But if it doesn’t—' She sensed his invisible shrug. Then he was silent for the better part of two minutes, and she was content to leave him so, for she could feel the intensity of his thought as yet again his brain examined the rough plan she’d outlined for him, turning it over and over again to consider it from all directions.

'You know,' he said thoughtfully at last, 'the really crazy thing is that I think this might just work. There’s no fallback position if it doesn’t, but if everything breaks right, or even half right, it actually might work.'

'I like to think I usually give myself at least some chance for success,' Honor said dryly, and he laughed softly.

'I’m sure you do, Commodore. But so did I, and look where I wound up!'

'Fair enough,' Honor conceded. 'But if I may, Commodore, I’d suggest you think of Hell not as the place you ‘wound up,’ but as the temporary stopping place you’re going to leave with us.'

'An optimist, I see.' Ramirez was silent again, thinking, and then he smacked his hands together with the sudden, shocking sound of an explosion. 'All right, Commodore Harrington! If you’re crazy enough to try it, I suppose I’m crazy enough to help you.'

'Good,' Honor said, but then she went on in a careful tone. 'There is just one other thing, Commodore.'

'Yes?' His voice was uninflected, but Honor could taste the emotions behind it, and the one thing she hadn’t expected was suppressed, devilish amusement.

'Yes,' she said firmly. 'We have to settle the question of command.'

'I see.' He leaned back, a solider piece of the darkness beside her as he crossed his ankles and folded his arms across his massive chest. 'Well, I suppose we should consider relative seniority, then,' he said courteously. 'My own date of rank as a commodore is 1870 p.d. And yours is?'

'I was only eleven T-years old in 1870!' Honor protested.

'Really?' Laughter lurked in his voice. 'Then I suppose I’ve been a commodore a little longer than you have.'

'Well, yes, but—I mean, with all due respect, you’ve been stuck here on Hell for the last forty years, Commodore! There’ve been changes, developments in—'

She broke off and clenched her jaw. Should I tell him I’m a full admiral in the Grayson Navy? she wondered. But if I do that now, it’ll sound like—

'Oh, don’t worry so much, Commodore Harrington!' Ramirez laughed out loud, breaking into her thoughts. 'You’re right, of course. My last operational experience was so long ago I’d have trouble just finding the flag bridge. Not only that, you and your people are the ones who managed to get down here with the shuttles and the weapons that might just make this entire thing work.'

He shook his head in the darkness, and his voice—and the emotions Honor felt through Nimitz—were dead serious when he went on.

'If you truly manage to pull this off, you’ll certainly have earned the right of command,' he told her. 'And the one thing we absolutely can’t afford is any division within our ranks or competition for authority between you and me. I may technically be senior to you, but I will cheerfully accept your authority.'

'And you’ll support me after the initial operation?' she pressed. 'What happens then is going to be even more important than the preliminary op—if we’re going to get off-planet, at any rate—and no one can command this kind of campaign by committee.' She paused a moment, then went on deliberately. 'And there’s another consideration, as well. I fully realize that you and thousands of other people on this planet will have your own ideas about what to do with the Peeps, and how. But if we’re going to carry through to a conclusion that actually gives us