Proxmire as a bit ridiculous), and she sounded doubtful as she tapped keys.
'It’s some kind of small craft,' she announced a second later, 'but I’m not getting a transponder code from it.'
'No IFF?' Proxmire demanded as an icy fist seemed to grip his stomach and squeeze.
'No, Sir. It’s—' The woman froze, and then her head whipped towards Proxmire. '
But by then the first of sixteen missiles were in final acquisition, and it was much too late.
'Wolf, this is Cub.' The voice in Honor’s earbug sounded drained. 'The target is dead. I repeat, the target is dead. We’re closing to look for survivors... but I don’t think there’ll be many.'
'Understood, Cub,' Honor said quietly. She looked down on the carnage below her. The Peeps were falling back—in fact, they were running for their lives—but they still had an enormous advantage in sheer numbers. She needed Metcalf and DuChene to return to Inferno and bring up the rest of the inmates as reinforcements, but she couldn’t tell them that. Not yet. Like them, she was a naval officer, and she, too, knew the code. You did not abandon possible survivors—yours or the enemy’s—and especially not when you were the one who had killed their ship. And yet—
'Expedite your search, Cub,' she said calmly. 'We need you down here ASAP.'
'Understood, Wolf. We’ll make it as quick as we can,' Metcalf replied, 'and—' She paused suddenly, and then she laughed harshly, the sound cold and ugly with self-loathing. 'It shouldn’t take long anyway. Her fusion bottle just failed.'
Honor winced, but she couldn’t let herself think about that just now.
'Understood, Gerry,' she said instead. And then she cut the circuit and turned her attention back to her targeting HUD, searching for more people to kill.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A chime sounded, and Honor looked up from the terminal in front of her. She pressed a button on the desk console which had once belonged to Citizen Brigadier Tresca, and the door to the office (which had also once belonged to Citizen Brigadier Tresca, but he was dead and no longer needed either of them) slid open to reveal Alistair McKeon in conversation with Andrew LaFollet. The armsman had left Honor's side long enough to participate in the capture of the vehicle park and picked up a minor flesh wound in the process. But Fritz Montoya had access to a proper base hospital again at last, and LaFollet's injury was responding nicely to quick heal. More to the point, perhaps, his Steadholder had a proper office for him to stand sentry outside of once again, and while he might still be out of his proper uniform, he'd settled back into his appointed role with an almost audible sigh of relief.
McKeon glanced up as the door opened and nodded to Honor over LaFollet's shoulder. He obviously wanted to finish whatever he'd been saying to her armsman, but his expression was grim, and her stomach muscles tightened as she caught the taste of his emotions. Warner Caslet was with him, and the Peep officer looked even grimmer than McKeon.
Nimitz raised his head from where he drowsed on the perch Honor and LaFollet had rigged for him. He'd been napping there a lot over the last five days, and despite her apprehension over whatever had brought McKeon here with such an expression, Honor felt her own spirits lift as she reached up to scratch the 'cat's ears. His buzzing purr and a gentle wave of love answered her caress, and then he rose and stretched deeply but carefully. His crippled mid-limb and twisted pelvis continued to stab him with pain at any injudicious movement, yet he radiated a sense of complacency as he contemplated the change in their circumstances. Not only was Styx much cooler than Camp Inferno had been, but the installations they'd captured from the Peeps even had air-conditioning. And as if that weren't enough, he'd quickly discovered that the huge StateSec farms on the island produced celery.
Actually, it had been Carson Clinkscales who'd discovered that fact. He'd turned up outside Honor's quarters on their second morning on Styx and almost shyly extended a fresh head of celery, still damp with dew, and Nimitz had been in heaven. He'd always been fond of Clinkscales, but the ensign's gift had moved the young Grayson officer into the select circle of his closest friends.
Honor smiled in memory, but then her smile faded. McKeon had finished whatever he'd been saying to LaFollet, and now he and Caslet walked into her office.
'Good morning, Alistair. Warner.' She greeted them calmly, allowing herself to show no trace of her reaction to the anxiety they radiated.
'Good morning, Ma'am,' Caslet said. McKeon only nodded, which would have been a sure sign of his worry even if she hadn't been able to feel his emotions, and she waved at the chairs which faced her desk.
They sat at her silent invitation, and she tipped back in her own new, comfortable chair to study them briefly. Their sojourn on Hell had given both of them weathered complexions and leaned them down—McKeon, in particular, had lost a good two centimeters of waistline. Well, that was fair enough. Even Honor's normally pale complexion had turned a golden bronze, and she'd actually begun getting back some of her muscle mass despite the awkwardness of exercising with only one arm. Which, a corner of her brain thought dryly, she had just discovered was nowhere near as awkward as trying to operate a console keyboard one-handed.
But the other thing Honor and McKeon had in common was the pulser each of them still wore... and which Caslet did not.
'You look unhappy about something, Alistair,' she said after a moment. 'Why?'
'We found two more bodies this morning, Ma'am,' McKeon said flatly, and Honor winced at the bleak sense of helplessness behind his words. She quirked the eyebrow above her good eye, and his mouth twisted. Then he sighed. 'It wasn't pretty, Honor. Whoever did it took their time with both of them. It looks to me like there must have been five or six killers, and some of the mutilations were definitely sexual.'
'I see.' She leaned back once more and rubbed her face with her fingers. It seemed almost natural after all these months to feel nothing at all from the pressure on her left cheek, and at the moment she wished she could feel nothing at all deep inside, either. But only for a moment. Then she crushed the self-pitying thought under a ruthless mental heel and lowered her hand.
'Any idea at all who did it?'
'I don't think it was any of our people from Inferno,' McKeon replied, and glanced at Caslet.
'I don't think it was, either, Ma'am,' the Peep said. In some ways, he had become even more isolated since the capture of Camp Charon, for the flood of SS prisoners they'd taken regarded him with the bitter contempt reserved for traitors, while the island's liberated slaves couldn't have cared less how he came to be here. All they cared about was that he was a Peep officer... and that was why he had to be accompanied at all times by an armed guard.
'Why not?' Honor asked him.
'Largely because of the mutilations, Ma'am,' he replied steadily. 'I'm sure some of the people from Inferno would love to massacre every SS thug they could lay hands on, and, to be honest, I don't blame them. But this—' He shook his head grimly. 'Whoever did this really hated their targets. I'm no psych type, but the nature of the mutilations certainly suggests to me that at least some of the killers were people who'd been hauled back here as sex slaves. And, frankly,' he met her gaze levelly, 'I blame them even less for wanting revenge than I blame the people from Inferno.'
'I see.' Honor frowned down at her terminal, rubbing the edge of the console with a long index finger while she considered what he'd said.
He was right, of course. As Harriet Benson had told her that first day, the SS garrison had regarded the prisoners in their charge as property. Worse than that: as toys. And too many of them had played with their 'toys' like cruel, spiteful children twisting the heads off puppies to see what would happen. Most of the outright sex slaves they'd dragged back to Styx had been political prisoners—civilians from the PRH itself—which had probably indicated at least a modicum of caution on the garrison's part. Most military services gave their people at least rudimentary hand-to-hand training, after all.
But the wheel had turned full circle now. Two-thirds of the SS garrison had been killed, wounded, or captured, but at least six or seven hundred of them had so far escaped apprehension. And on Styx, unlike the rest of
