Field Of Dishonor

There were no remote order terminals in Dempsey's Bar. Patrons were served by real, live waiters and waitresses—a factor, given civilian labor costs on the Navy's busiest orbital shipyard, which explained much about Dempsey's price levels. It also helped explain why Dempsey's patrons were willing to pay those prices, but it wasn't the entire story.

The bar and its adjoining restaurant were the gathering place of choice for virtually all off-duty personnel for many reasons. One was familiarity. Dempsey's Restaurants, Inc., had been the original flagship corporation of the Dempsey Cartel, second only to the Hauptman Cartel in wealth and power, and virtually every city in the Kingdom boasted at least one Dempsey's of its own. They were everywhere, and everyone knew them, and if the chain couldn't match the eminence of one-of-a-kind establishments like Cosmos, or emulate the frenetic activity of 'cutting edge' night spots, that was fine with its managers, because they didn't want those things. What they did want was visibility and familiarity coupled with a level of service, comfort, and quality guaranteed to attract and hold the loyalty of their patrons (even at Dempsey's prices), and that was precisely what they had achieved.

This particular Dempsey's lay at the very hub of HMSS Hephaestus's core, yet its designers had gone to great lengths to create a ground-side environment. They couldn't avoid the legally mandated color codings for emergency life support and other disaster-related access and service points, but they'd paid through the nose for permits to build double-high compartments, then used the extra height to accommodate dropped ceilings that hid the snake nests of pipes and power conduits which covered deck-heads elsewhere. Sophisticated holo projections outside the casement 'windows' displayed ever-changing, planetary panoramas, and it was Monday, which meant the bar was 'on' Sphinx. The cold, blue skies of autumn soared over the spires of Yawata Crossing, Sphinx's second largest city, and traffic and pedestrian noises drifted in through open windows on artfully cool breezes that smelled of live greenery and sidewalk-cafe cooking. Dempsey's holos never repeated themselves, either. Unlike the constructs less discerning owners might have used, they were broadcast from or recorded at other units of the chain on Manticore, Sphinx, and Gryphon, which gave them specific locations and complete spontaneity. Diners could—and did—sit for hours watching ground-side places they often knew well, and Manticore and Sphinx were close enough to Hephaestus to allow near real-time transmission.

Background holos, however nice, might have seemed a relatively minor element in producing the near- fanatic loyalty of Dempsey's Hephaestus—based regulars when Manticore itself was barely twenty minutes away by shuttle. But for more than a single person, that twenty-minute trip demanded coordination of duty schedules which was often difficult and frequently worse. A spur of the moment evening ground-side with a lover or a few close friends was a near impossibility... except at Dempsey's, where they brought ground-side to you.

Colonel Tomas Santiago Ramirez discovered his glass was empty and paused in conversation with Paul Tankersley to raise a summoning hand. His chair creaked with his movement, and he grimaced wryly at its complaint. He was used to such sounds of strain, and it was hard to blame the furniture. It hadn't been designed with him in mind.

Paul saw his grimace and hid a smile of sympathy. He and Ramirez had taken to one another almost from the first, and acquaintance had turned quickly into friendship. The colonel was a voracious reader and a man of catholic tastes, with a dry, understated sense of humor he took great pains to hide. His guard tended to come down once he got to know someone, and he and Paul had fallen into the habit of getting together for wide-ranging conversations, liberally fueled by excellent beer. Ramirez's emigre origins gave him a different, often subtly provocative viewpoint on things native Manticorans took for granted, and Paul enjoyed their discussions immensely. It didn't hurt that the colonel was devoted to Honor, but Paul suspected they'd have become friends even if he hadn't been.

Ramirez was also just as tough as his physique suggested, yet he was simultaneously one of the gentlest men Paul had ever met... except where the People's Republic of Haven was concerned. No one could have called the colonel soft, but it was as if all his hostility had been distilled and directed toward a single goal: the destruction of the People's Republic and all its works. It might have been inaccurate to call his hatred for the Peeps obsessive, but not by very much.

His exec was another matter. Susan Hibson didn't share her boss's implacable vindictiveness toward Haven, but only an idiot would ever take liberties with her... and no one would take them twice. She was no martinet, and her people were devoted to her, but they feared her, as well. It wasn't that she didn't suffer fools gladly; she didn't suffer them at all, and God help anyone who dared to suggest there was anything, however impossible, her Marines couldn't do.

Perhaps, Paul thought, the difference between Hibson and Ramirez had something to do with their sizes. The major was thirty-five centimeters shorter than her superior, barely squeaking past the Corps' minimum height requirement, and she was built for speed, not power. Her colonel could afford his gentleness because someone built like a suit of battle armor never needed an attack-dog mentality, but Susan Hibson looked too small and delicate for a 'proper' warrior. The Marines, unlike the Navy, were expected to get down in the mud and the blood, and Paul had no doubt Hibson had been forced to prove herself in her chosen profession—not simply to others, but to herself—for years.

The summoned waiter appeared at Ramirez's elbow, and the colonel smiled at his companions.

'The same again for everyone?' His voice was deep, but its curiously liquid consonants gave it an almost musical lilt. San Martin was one of the worlds whose ethno-preservationist colonists had managed to hang onto their native language, and Ramirez had never lost his accent.

Murmurs of agreement met his question, but Alistair McKeon shook his head with a smile.

'No more beer for Mr. Tremaine,' he announced. Lieutenant (Senior Grade) Scotty Tremaine made an indignant sound, and McKeon chuckled. 'We adults have to look after the infants among us. Besides, he's going on watch soon.'

'With all due respect, Sir, that's a load of, um, unfounded prejudice. We younger, fitter types have the metabolism to handle alcohol without impairing our faculties. Unlike,' the sandy-haired lieutenant added, 'some old—I mean, certain distinguished senior officers.'

'You, young man, spend entirely too much time with people like Senior Chief Harkness.' McKeon's tone was austere, but his eyes twinkled, and Tankersley swallowed a laugh. He'd come to know the people around this table well and liked them all, not just Ramirez, but he'd been more than a little surprised by McKeon's and Tremaine's off-duty informality.

Most captains he'd known never socialized with their juniors, much less joked with them, but McKeon managed it without ever undermining his authority or suggesting that he played favorites. Paul wasn't certain how the captain managed that, and he was fairly sure he couldn't have done it himself, but Tremaine's own personality probably had something to do with it.

'Not guilty, Sir,' the lieutenant said now. 'I'm just reminding you of scientifically demonstrated facts.'

'Of course you are.' McKeon smiled again, then shrugged. 'All right. One more beer for Mr. Tremaine. After that, he's on sodas.'

His voice held a slight but unmistakable undertone of command, and Tremaine accepted it with a nod and a smile of his own. The waiter tapped their orders into his pad and departed, and Hibson drained the last swallow from her current stein and sighed.

'I have to say I'm glad things are finally settling down dirt-side,' she said, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation, 'but I can't help wishing Burgundy had pulled it off.'

'Amen to that,' Ramirez rumbled with an uncharacteristic frown, and McKeon nodded, but Tankersley shook his head.

'I don't think I do, Susan,' he disagreed. The others looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged. 'I don't give a good goddamn what happens to Pavel Young, as long as it's unpleasant, but refusing to admit him to the Lords would only have made the situation still worse.'

'I hate to admit it, but you're probably right,' McKeon said after a moment. He shook his head. 'Who would have believed that little shit would actually support the declaration? I hate agreeing with him on anything, and I don't believe for a minute that he's really changed, but the son-of-a-bitch has been useful. And I imagine refusing to seat him would have made things worse for the Captain in the long run, too, now that you mention it.'

Paul nodded seriously, but the corners of his mouth tried to smile. All of his companions knew he was Honor's lover, and all of them were unabashed partisans of hers, as well, but they all—every one of them, including