Worlds of Honor

citadel where nothing could reach it, and concentrated on what she had to do because she did have to do it. Because Ranjit certainly couldn't, and that meant there was no one but her.

She made her careful way down the trunk to the hand that had moved. It was a small hand, not much larger than her own, protruding from a wash of snow, and it moved again, weakly, as she reached it. She drew a deep breath and leaned forward to touch it, and then almost screamed as it twisted around like a snake to lock upon her wrist. It clutched with desperate strength, pulling frantically, demanding rescue, and the force it exerted jerked her off-balance. Her forehead slammed into the tree trunk, and she heard herself cry out as the impact bloodied her nose. But the shock also seemed to help somehow, as if the familiarity of the pain had broken through her sense of unreality and horror, and she heaved back. She managed to yank free, and the hand flailed frantically while a muffled sound came from the snow through which it emerged.

A part of Susan wanted to stamp on the hand's fingers for frightening her that way, but it was only a tiny part, for most of her understood only too well the terror which had driven it. And so instead of striking back at it, she simply avoided it and began digging into the snow with her own hands. She'd lost her gloves somewhere, and the snow quickly numbed her fingers, but it didn't take long. She was able to make a good estimate of where the rest of the hand's body was from the angle of the arm, and she quickly excavated downward to reach the shoulder. The hand stopped its flailing, making it easier for her to work, as its owner realized someone was digging away the snow, and long, snow-matted golden hair gleamed palely in the dim light as she uncovered it. She worked her way cautiously higher, and then a head flung itself upward the moment she'd shoved enough snow aside.

'Oh God!' The ragged, gasping cry seemed to fill what remained of the lift car, and Susan stared into huge, terrified blue eyes. The girl before her was about midway between her and Ranjit in age, and probably would have been quite pretty under other conditions. But these weren't 'other conditions,' and she blinked and squinted up at Susan from a face twisted with fear.

And no wonder, Susan thought. The other girl must have been pinned face-down when the tree trunk crashed into the car, and only the fact that she'd managed to curl her right arm under as she hit had held her face and chest just a little clear of the car floor, forming an air space until Susan dug her out.

'What– What hap—' the blonde began, then chopped herself off rather than ask the excruciatingly obvious question. That was the first thing about her of which Susan unreservedly approved, and she smiled tightly.

'Who are you?' the blonde asked instead.

'Susan Hibson,' Susan replied, and jerked her head back over her shoulder. 'My brother Ranjit is back there. He can't move either. Who're you and how bad are you hurt?'

The blonde blinked at her, then craned her neck, trying to push herself up far enough to look past Susan at Ranjit. It was little more than a reflex action, and she couldn't complete it anyway with all the weight piled atop her, and she shook herself.

'Andrea,' she said after a heartbeat. 'I'm Andrea Manders.'

'How bad're you hurt?' Susan asked again.

'I . . . don't know,' Andrea said. 'I don't think I'm hurt at all. I just can't move.'

'That's all?' Susan pressed.

'I think so. I can feel my feet and my legs and everything. I just can't move them, and— hneeeek!'

Susan jumped at Andrea's sudden, totally unexpected squeal.

'What?' she demanded. 'What?'

'Someone—someone touched me!' Andrea gasped. 'There's someone else under all this stuff! Someone's holding my ankle!'

Susan flinched at the very thought and stared desperately at the massive barrier of wood and snow and crumpled alloy blocking her from whoever else might be alive underneath it all. There was no way in the world she could dig her way through all of that, and her soul cringed as she imagined someone else, trapped even more completely than Andrea or Ranjit, alone in the suffocating dark and cold while they ran out of air and warmth.

'We've got to get them out!' Andrea was saying. 'We've got to—'

'I know!' Susan interrupted harshly. 'I just don't know how.' She bit her lip, wiping unconsciously at the blood still trickling from her mashed nose, and thought hard for several seconds. 'Look,' she told Andrea finally, 'I've gotta go talk it over with Ranjit. Then I'll see what I can do.'

'Don't go!' Andrea gasped.

'I've got to,' Susan repeated.

'Please!' Andrea whispered. 'Don't leave me alone!'

'You're not alone,' another voice said. It was Ranjit, his words harsh-edged with his own pain and fear. 'I'm here too—Andrea, was it?' he went on. 'But Sooze is right. She's the only one of us who can move. She and I have to talk. But you're not alone, okay?'

'O-okay,' Andrea got out after a moment, still shaky but no longer hovering on the edge of panic, and Susan bent down to pat her shoulder gently and then started climbing back up to Ranjit.

Her brother looked worse when she got back to him, but he smiled at her. He didn't mention that he thought his right leg was bleeding under the wreckage that trapped it, or that a deadly chill was creeping into the limb despite his ski suit's best efforts.

'How is she?' he asked quietly, jerking his head in the direction of the girl he couldn't actually see from his position.

'Okay, I think,' Susan replied, equally quietly. 'But she's scared, Ranjit—even more scared than I am!' Her lips produced a trembling smile.

'Is there any way you can dig her out? So maybe the two of you could get whoever else is under there out?' Ranjit hated to ask the question and drop the responsibility for an answer on her, but no one else could answer it. He watched her bite her lip, but she shook her head without hesitation.

'No way,' she said, and he heard her self-anger in the flatness of her tone. 'She's caught under a branch of that tree or whatever it is. I can't shift it to get her out, and I can't get past it to dig whoever else is under there out. Too much snow and metal and rocks and junk are all mashed up together with the tree, Ranjit. I don't see how anyone can be alive under there . . . or how they can last very long if we don't get them out quick.'

'I see.' Ranjit closed his eyes against his own pain and fear and sucked in deep, dragging draughts of air. Susan was right, he thought. None of them could know what conditions were like on the far side of that tree, but the lift car hadn't been all that big to begin with. The open space they knew about and the mass of stuff they could see took up at least two-thirds of its original volume, and that meant anyone trapped beyond the tree was already living on borrowed time. For that matter, so was he, if the way his leg felt was any indication. Even Andrea might be wrong about her own condition—Ranjit hadn't realized how badly he was hurt until he tried to move, after all—and they had no way to know if more than one person was trapped on the other side of the car. But Susan couldn't dig whoever it was out. And that meant. . . .

'Have you checked out this end of the car, Sooze?' he asked finally.

'This end?' she repeated, then shook her head. 'I've been kinda busy,' she added pointedly, and he surprised both of them with a breathless, pain-curdled chuckle.

'I guess you have,' he agreed, and turned his head to meet her eyes. 'But you're gonna have to check now, Sooze. This is the upper end of the car. That means it's the one closest to the surface.'

'Closest to—?' Susan began, then cut herself off, and her eyes widened with a new, fresh fear as she realized what he meant.

Honor Harrington stood with her hands jammed deep in the pockets of her Navy-issue parka, and despite her total lack of expression, a fury far colder than Mount Pericles' snow blazed within her as she watched Commander Novaya Tyumen wave his hands and snap orders at the Marines and Navy ratings around him. It hadn't taken the baron long to get himself dirtside after Captain Tammerlane's brutal assessment of operational realities, and he had immediately snatched command back from Honor.

A part of her had wanted to let him have it without a struggle, for she was appalled by the scale of the destruction. The Star Kingdom hadn't seen a natural disaster like this one or such a heavy loss of civilian lives in