Echoes Of Honor

brought center stage, 'we’ll be getting very heavy support. In addition to tankers and medical and repair ships, HQ is assigning two complete service squadrons of fast freighters for the specific purpose of assuring us an adequate supply of the new missile pods.'

He bared his teeth in a fierce smile as several people around the table made pleased noises.

'The fact that we can finally match the Manties’ capabilities in that area is certainly out of the bag by now—they could hardly miss knowing after the way Citizen Admiral Tourville kicked their ass at Adler—but this will be our first mass deployment of the system. In addition, we have upgraded recon drone capability courtesy of, ah, some technical assistance,' even here, Giscard noted, MacIntosh was careful not to mention the Solarian League by name, 'and our general electronic warfare capabilities will come much closer to matching the Manties’ abilities in that area. I won’t try to tell any of you that they won’t still have a considerable edge, but it’s going to be narrower than it’s been in at least the last four years, and hopefully they won’t even know we’re coming. With that kind of surprise working for us, we should cut quite a swathe before they can redeploy their own units to slow us down.'

There were more smiles around the table now. Even Citizen Captain Joubert got into the act, although Challot still seemed less enthralled by the prospect than her fellows.

'Now,' MacIntosh went on, entering more commands into his terminal, 'to look at our ops area. As you know, HQ wanted a zone where things have been rather quiet and the Manties have drawn down their forces to support front-line operations, but important enough to be sure we attract their attention. I think,' he smiled and entered a final command, 'they’ve found one.'

A holo display flashed to life above the table, and Giscard saw Citizen Commander Tyler sit up straight in her chair as she saw their proposed operational area for the first time. Nor was her reaction unique. Only Giscard, Pritchart, Joubert, and MacIntosh had known where Operation Icarus was aimed before this moment, and eyes narrowed and faces tightened with mingled anticipation and worry as the rest of his staff discovered that information.

Stars were sparse in the holo, but the ones which floated there had a value out of all proportion to the density of the local stellar population. A thin rash of bright red light chips indicated naval bases or member systems of the Manticoran Alliance, but all of them were dominated by the bright purple glow of a single star: Basilisk, the terminus of the Manticore Wormhole Junction where the war had almost begun four T-years early.

'HQ is granting us quite a lot of flexibility in selecting and scheduling our precise targets in this area,' MacIntosh went on, 'but the basic plan calls for us to begin operations down here,' a cursor flicked to life in the display, 'and then head up in this general direction—'

The cursor crawled upward through the stars, heading steadily towards Basilisk, and Giscard leaned back in his chair to listen as closely as the most junior member of his staff.

* * *

'I need to speak with you, Citizen Admiral. Alone.'

Citizen Commissioner Pritchart’s flat voice cut through the sound of moving people as the staff meeting broke up two hours later. More than one of the naval officers flinched—not because she’d raised her voice, or because she’d said anything overtly threatening, but because she’d said so little during the meeting. People’s commissioners weren’t noted, as a rule, for reticence. Part of their job, after all, was to ensure that no one ever forgot the living, breathing presence of StateSec as the People’s guardian. Which suggested at least the possibility that Citizen Admiral Giscard—or perhaps one of his officers—might have put a foot so far wrong that Citizen Commissioner Pritchart intended to chop the offending leg right off.

'Of course, Citizen Commissioner,' Giscard replied after the briefest of hesitations. 'Here?'

'No.' Pritchart looked around the compartment, topaz eyes flicking over the officers calmly. 'Your day cabin, perhaps,' she suggested, and he shrugged.

'As you wish, Citizen Commissioner,' he said, with an apparent calmness which woke mingled admiration and trepidation in some of his new subordinates. 'Citizen Captain Joubert, I’ll expect those reports from you and Citizen Commander MacIntosh and Citizen Lieutenant Thaddeus by fourteen hundred.'

'Of course, Citizen Admiral.' Joubert nodded respectfully, but his secretive eyes darted towards Pritchart for just a moment. The citizen commissioner did not acknowledge his glance, and he turned to address himself to MacIntosh as Giscard waved gently at the compartment hatch.

'After you, Citizen Commissioner,' he said coolly.

Chapter Seventeen

There was no sentry outside Giscard’s quarters as there would have been on a Manticoran vessel. That was one of the 'elitist' privileges the PN’s officer corps had been required to surrender under the New Order, but at this particular moment, Javier Giscard was actually quite pleased by his loss. It meant there was one less pair of eyes to watch his comings and goings, although he supposed most people would have considered that having Salamis’ chief spy and political dictator personally accompanying him more than compensated for the sentry’s absence.

They would have been wrong, however. Or, rather, they would have been entirely correct, simply not in any way they might have imagined, for Giscard and his keeper had a rather different relationship from the one most people assumed they had. Now the two of them stepped through the hatch into his day cabin, and Pritchart drew a slim hand remote from her pocket and pressed a button as the hatch slid shut behind them.

'Thank God that’s over,' she sighed, dropping the remote which controlled the surveillance devices in Giscard’s cabin on the corner of his desk, and then turned and opened her arms to him.

'Amen,' he said fervently, and their lips met in a hungry kiss whose power still astounded him. Or perhaps simply astounded him even more than it had, for the fire between his people’s commissioner and himself had grown only brighter in the two T-years since the disastrous collapse of Republican operations in Silesia, as if the flame were expending its power in a prodigal effort to drive back the ever-darker shadows closing in upon them.

Had anyone at StateSec suspected even for a moment that Pritchart and he had become lovers, the consequences would have been lethal... and widely publicized. Probably. It might have been a hard call for Oscar Saint-Just, though, when all was said. Would it be better to make their executions a crushing example of the price the People would exact from any StateSec agent who let himself or herself be seduced from the cold performance of StateSec’s duty to ferret out and destroy any smallest independence among the Navy’s officers? Or better to make both of them simply disappear, lest the very fact that they had kept their secret for almost four T-years now tempt still other people’s commissioners into apostasy?

Giscard had no idea how Saint-Just would answer that question... and he never, ever wanted to learn. And so he and Pritchart played their deadly game, acting out the roles chance had assigned them with a skill which would have shamed any thespian, in a play where simple survival comprised a rave review. It was hard on both of them, especially the need to project exactly the right balance of distrust, leashed animosity, and wary cooperation, yet they’d had no choice but to learn to play their assumed characters well.

'Ummm...' She broke the kiss at last and leaned back in his arms, looking up at him with a blinding smile which would have stunned anyone who had ever seen her in her people’s commissioner’s guise, with those topaz executioner’s eyes watching every move with chill dispassion. Indeed, it still surprised Giscard at times, for when they’d first met three and a half T-years before, he’d been as deceived by her mask as anyone.

'I’m so glad to be back into space,' she sighed, wrapping one arm around him and leaning her head against his shoulder. He hugged her tightly to his side, and then they moved together to the small couch which faced his desk. They sank onto it, and he pressed a kiss to the part of her sweet-smelling hair, nostrils flaring as he inhaled the scent of her.

'Me, too,' he told her, 'and not just because it means we’re officially off the shit list.' He kissed her again, and she giggled. The sound was sharp and silvery as a bell, and just as musical, and it always astounded him. It sounded so bright and infectious coming from someone with her record and formidable acting skills, and its spontaneity was deeply and uniquely precious to him.

'It does help to be the chief spy and admiral-watcher again,' she agreed, and they both sobered. The