Honor Among Enemies

'I can't possibly justify taking Artemis over there,' Fuchien said flatly. 'First, the Peep may have survived, and her damage may be repairable. We could sail right into her broadside, and I cannot risk all the people aboard this ship. Secondly, it would take hours for us to make the flight, whatever happened, and every minute we spend under power increases the chances another Peep will come along and spot us.'

'I realize that, but we can't simply abandon them.'

'We don't have a choice, Sir!' Fuchien's voice was harsh, and her eyes flickered with anger. Anger directed irrationally at Hauptman for making her say what she knew was true. 'And, Sir, you may be this ship's owner, but I am her captain.'

'Please, Captain.' More than one eye widened in disbelief at the pleading in Hauptman's voice. 'There has to be something we can do!'

Fuchien started to snap back, then closed her mouth and settled for a grim headshake. Hauptman's shoulders slumped, and the stricken look in his eyes hit Harold Sukowski like a hammer. He has to do something, the captain thought. He's hard, arrogant, a copper-plated son-of-a-bitch, but he understands responsibility, and Lady Harrington rubbed his nose in it. And so, Sukowski glanced at Stacey Hauptman, did making a fool of himself in front of his daughter. But Maggie's right. We can't risk the ship, however much we all wish we...

His thoughts chopped off, and he frowned. He heard Fuchien and Hauptman continuing to speak, but they sounded distant and far away as his brain worked at frantic speed.

'I'm sorry, Sir,' Fuchien said at last, her voice much gentler than it had been. 'I truly am. But there's nothing we can do.'

'Maybe there is,' Sukowski murmured, and every person on the bridge swung to stare at him. 'We can't take Artemis out on SAR, no,' he went on, 'but there may be another way.'

'I've got a visual on the Peep, Skipper,' Scotty Tremaine said.

He and Harkness had taken a pinnace out for an inspection of the hull, and one look had told them there was no hope. Wayfarer was broken and buckled, her impeller rings shattered. That meant none of them would survive, and Honor had sent Tremaine and Harkness to search for the Peep. Perhaps her damages were less serious than Wayfarers. If they were, and if the survivors of both crews worked together, perhaps they could get her to a port... and at the moment, even a Peep POW camp would be heaven.

Now Honor listened over her suit com as Scotty described Achmed's damages, and her heart sank. She was in one of the enlisted mess compartments which had somehow retained pressure, with her helmet off, and aside from a few small parties MacBride still had probing wreckage where someone might be trapped alive, all of her surviving personnel were either here, in sickbay, in DCC, or down in Fusion Two.

There were few enough of them that no one felt crowded, she told herself grimly, and waited until Scotty finished his report.

'All right,' she said then. 'She's not going anywhere with that bow damage, and we're drifting steadily apart. See if you can contact anyone on board. It sounds like they're in even worse shape than we are. If so, offer to take them off and bring them aboard Wayfarer. Tell them,' she smiled bleakly, 'we can figure out later who's whose prisoner.'

'Aye, Ma'am,' Tremaine replied, and sent his pinnace moving closer to Achmed.

'Is that wise, Skipper?' Cardones asked too quietly for anyone else to here. 'We're on canned life support, and Environmental looks bad.'

'There can't be many left, Rafe,' she replied, equally quietly, 'and for all we know, they don't have any life support over there. We, on the other hand, may be able to get some of ours back. Our only hope is that we can and that one of their consorts has some idea where we both are and comes looking for us, but they may not have even that much hope. We have to give them the best chance we can. It's the only decent thing to do.'

Cardones nodded slowly, then moved off to his own duties, and Honor looked back up and beckoned to the petty officer she'd been speaking to when Tremaine's report came in.

'All right, Haverty,' she said briskly. 'Once you've got that leak in Seven-Seventeen patched, I want pressure back in there. Commander Ryder needs to move people out of sickbay to relieve crowding, and that's the best place to put them. So as soon as we've got pressure, inform Senior Chief Lewis so we can organize a working party to move them. Once you're through in Seven-Seventeen, I want you and your people to do an eyeball on Main Environmental. Then...'

She went on speaking, passing her orders in the confident tones of a captain, and wondered how much longer she could keep the pretense up.

Stephen Holtz followed the Manty lieutenant into the mess compartment, and his face was numb, still frozen with the shock of loss. His casualties were far worse than the Q-ships, in both absolute and relative terms. There'd been twenty-two hundred men and women on his ship; the forty-six survivors had all been able to fit into the single pinnace which had come to pick them up.

The Manty pilot, Lieutenant Tremaine, had invited him to take the copilots seat aboard the shuttle, and he'd watched the Q-ship's mangled hull grow through the view port. He'd found a bitter satisfaction in knowing he'd destroyed it just as certainly as it had destroyed his beautiful Achmed, yet he'd known it was foolish. These people were his enemies, but the only reason any of his people were still alive was because those enemies had taken them off the airless, powerless hulk which had once been a battlecruiser. And they, as he, had simply been doing their duty.

Duty, he thought bitterly. Oh, yes. We did our duty, didn't we? And look where it's brought us all.

A tall woman in a captain's skinsuit turned to face him, almond eyes dark with matching grief, and he nodded to her. Somehow the formality of a salute would have been out of place.

'Stephen Holtz, PNS Achmed,' he said in a rusty-sounding voice.

'Honor Harrington, HMS Wayfarer, or what's left of her,' she replied, and Holtz felt his eyes widen. So this was Honor Harrington. Just as dangerous as the intelligence reports suggested... and as good. Well, I suppose I've managed one thing no one else seemed able to do. She won't be pounding any more of our ships into wreckage.

'I'm sorry your losses were so high,' Harrington said. 'As you can see, my own...' She shrugged, and Holtz nodded. There was no point in either of them hating the other. 'We may be in a little better position than I'd thought,' she went on more briskly. 'It looks like we can get at least some backup Environmental on line. It'll be canned life support, but one of our main scrubber plants is still intact, and we've got one operable fusion plant. If we can duct to the scrubber, we'll have enough life support for four hundred or so. Which,' she added with quiet bitterness, 'will be more than enough.' She inhaled deeply, then went on. 'Unfortunately, we've only got six or seven environmental techs left, and all our engineering officers were casualties, so it's going to take a while.'

'My assistant engineer's still alive,' Holtz offered. 'He may be able to help.'

'Thank you,' Harrington said simply, then looked him straight in the eye. 'Our vectors carrying us lengthwise down the Rift, Captain, but we're angling towards the Silesian side. My best guess is that we've got about nine days before we drift into the Sachsen Wave and break up. That, of course, assumes the Selker Shear doesn't get us first. As I see it, our only real chance is to use the pinnaces to mount a sensor watch and hope one of your people comes looking for you so we can get a com message to them. If they get here in time,' she drew a deep breath, 'I will surrender myself and my people to you. For now, however, what's left of this ship is still a Queens ship, and I am in command.'

'Should we consider ourselves your prisoners in the meantime?' Holtz asked with a ghost of a smile. Both of them knew the chance of rescue was effectively nonexistent, yet both of them continued to play their roles, and the thought amused him.