Echoes Of Honor

Payback time, she thought.

* * *

'Come on, come on! Move—move! ' Captain Harriet Benson chanted, reaching out and physically pushing people up the ramp. It was taking longer than they’d expected. Should have figured it would, she thought almost absently. We thought we’d allowed plenty of time, but Murphy always knows better. Yet the thought barely touched the surface of her mind. It was an aside, an inconsequential. What mattered was that they were actually doing it. That after the better part of seventy years on Hell, she was about to have her chance at kicking the Black Legs’ asses. Personally, she gave Commodore Harrington’s plan to actually get anyone off Hell no more than a thirty percent chance of success, but that hardly mattered. Whether they managed to escape the prison or not, they were going to make one hell of a hole in the StateSec garrison, and that was good enough for Harriet Benson.

'That’s the last, ma petite! ' Henri told her as he jogged up the ramp.

'Then get aboard, baudet! ' she told him, and he gave a wild laugh, paused just long enough to drag her head down for a burning kiss, and ran past her. She looked up to see Jesus Ramirez laughing and shook a fist at him, and then the two of them followed Dessouix up the ramp and the hatch hissed closed behind them.

Chapter Twenty-Four

'There it is, Ma’am,' Scotty Tremaine said very quietly, and Honor nodded. The island of Styx was a blur of green and brown on the wrinkled blue of the DuQuesne Ocean, named for the powerful Legislaturalist who had been the architect behind the PRH’s original plan of conquest.

Funny thing to call an ocean on a planet StateSec owns, she reflected absently. Wonder why they didn’t change its 'elitist' name to something more proletarian when they took over the lease?

Not that it mattered. It was just another of those distractions a human mind sought when the tension ratcheted high, and she knew it.

'I see it, Scotty,' she said, and keyed the intercom. 'All right, people. We’re about five minutes out. Stand by.' She released the stud, gave Nimitz a light caress, and looked at Tremaine. 'The bird is yours,' she said simply.

* * *

Citizen Major Cleilia Steiner rubbed the tip of her nose and contemplated the coming change of shift. She and several friends had a date to spend the afternoon surfing, and she was looking forward to trying out that new stud Citizen Captain Harper had brought back from Delta One-Niner last month. He was a political who’d been a big cheese in the Treasury Department under the old regime, and that lent a certain spice to demanding 'command performances' from him. Besides, Steiner had always been a sucker for that distinguished, silver-temple look, and if he was even half as good in bed as he was in the looks department, it should be quite an experience.

She smiled lazily at the thought. I wonder what 'the People' would think if they knew how damned much fun we have out here? she wondered. I know I never would’ve thought there was a post like this one! Sure it’s boring when you’re actually on duty—too much of the same old, same old to be any other way. But there are the off-duty perks, now aren’t there? Sort of makes you understand why all those rotten old Legislaturalists got such a charge out of being lords of creation, doesn’t it? Well, it’s our turn now, and I, for one, intend to enjoy it just as much as they ever did.

She chuckled, yet in the back of her mind was the memory of the day she’d joined StateSec, all bright and shiny with her desire to protect the People from their enemies. It hadn’t taken long for the shininess to rub off, and deep inside she had never stopped mourning the fact that it hadn’t. But the real world wasn’t like dreams, or the promises people like Cordelia Ransom had made. The real world was where you did the best you could, and you looked out for number one, and you watched your own ass, because it was for damned sure no one else would.

She shook herself and looked out over the neatly parked ranks of shuttles and pinnaces lined up along the parking circles down the side of the main field. Here and there a small cluster of techs labored over one of them in a desultory sort of way. There was no rush. Two things Camp Charon had plenty of were time and—especially—small craft. Steiner sometimes wondered exactly why there were so damned many of them, but no one else seemed to know, either. Of course, they’d already been here when StateSec took over from InSec, and the InSec garrison had been twice as large as StateSec’s. Maybe they’d actually needed all those birds for something... whatever it might have been. Not that it really mattered. All of them belonged to Steiner—when she had the watch, that was—and they made a satisfyingly perfect geometric pattern, parked side by side with their wings in maximum oversweep, gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Except that the pattern wasn’t quite perfect. There was a hole over there on parking circle twenty-three, and Steiner smiled.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Citizen Lieutenant Jardine! Is Citizen Perfect running late? Goodness. You’ll never hear the last of this!

She chuckled at the thought and checked her approach radar. There he was. The blip of his shuttle traced its course across the holo display, its IFF code blinking beside its icon, and she shook her head. Then she frowned. He was a few degrees off the right heading for a least-time flight from Camp Inferno, and as she watched, he was sweeping still further off. In fact, he was circling around to approach the field from the west, and she rubbed an eyebrow in puzzlement.

There was no operational reason why he shouldn’t come in from the west, but, as a rule, pilots did their best to avoid a western approach even when the tower wanted them to use it, because that approach brought them straight in over the base’s main installations... and over Citizen Brigadier Tresca’s personal quarters. Steiner hadn’t flown supply runs herself in over three T-years, but she remembered her own experience. Overflying the base’s anti-aircraft defenses while they automatically challenged her IFF codes had never bothered her half as much as the possibility that she might disturb the CO while he was napping. After all, even the most wildly errant SAM could only kill you once.

But Jardine was definitely coming around to approach from the west. Not only that, but he was high, and Steiner grimaced, wondering what the hell the Book-loving citizen lieutenant thought he was playing at.

Jardine, you dumb prick, she thought. Not even your fixation on the Regs is gonna save your ass if you disturb Tresca’s afternoon siesta! She watched his icon a moment longer, then shrugged and reached for the com.

* * *

'Jardine, this is Steiner.' The voice came from the com, and Tremaine and Honor glanced at one another. 'Would you care to tell me just what the hell you think you’re doing?' the voice went on. 'You do realize whose quarters you’re about to overfly, don’t you?'

'Coming up on Initial Point in thirty-eight seconds,' Linda Barstow said from the tac section.

'Understood, Tactical,' Honor replied, and flipped up the plastic shield over the master weapons release switch. What have you got in your basket, Little Red Riding Hood? a corner of her brain asked her, and she pressed the release button firmly with her thumb, then shifted her hand calmly to the multiposition toggle on the fire control stick and selected missiles.

'Weapons hot,' she said.

* * *

Steiner frowned, wondering why Jardine hadn’t replied, as the shuttle continued its approach. Its icon blipped green as it crossed into the base’s anti-air envelope and the computers routinely interrogated its IFF beacon and identified it as a friendly, and her frown deepened. There was still no concern, only irritation, and she keyed the