Worlds of Honor

decades, and very little in her Navy training had taught her how to cope with civilian death and devastation on such a scale. But even as that ignoble sliver of her had wanted to cringe away and let someone else decide how to deal with it, her own stubborn sense of responsibility had rebelled against Novaya Tyumen's authority. Partly, she knew, it was that she didn't trust his ability to cope with the situation, but there was more to it. Honor had been raised in the Copper Wall Mountains of Sphinx. She might never have seen a catastrophe of these dimensions, given Sphinx's sparser population, but she knew avalanches, and she'd pulled her share of the load in a couple of avalanche rescues before she left Sphinx for the Naval Academy at Saganami Island. But Novaya Tyumen was from Manticore, and she very much doubted he had ever even come close to anything as arduous and risky as something like this.

Besides, she told herself with brutal frankness, I know perfectly well that deep down inside I'm convinced I can do just about anythingbetter than hecan, now don't I? 

She snorted at the thought, and Nimitz bleeked reprovingly from her shoulder. Insalubrious as humans might find the current weather conditions, the 'cat was quite comfortable. Gryphon weather might be more fractious and changeable than that of Sphinx, but Sphinx's winters were far colder, and Nimitz was equipped with the long, silky coat to survive them. Yet if the weather didn't worry him, the empathic 'cat had been savagely battered by the emotions of the humans around him. The worst combers of panic had passed, which helped, but rescuers had already dug out and brought in over fifty injured people. The echoes of pain coming from those who had been hurt, mingled with the desperate determination of those trying frantically to find still more injured in time, remained more than sufficient to keep him off balance and edgy. Yet he was getting on top of it once more, and his bleek scolded her for the sharp edge of self-condemnation in her thoughts.

She reached up to caress his ears, but she never took her eyes from Novaya Tyumen. The baron hadn't bothered with a single word of approval for anyone since he grounded, but he'd acted with dispatch and at least an outer appearance of being in command of both the situation and himself. He'd quickly taken the scanner data Honor had gathered on her approach to the resort (and plotted on an overlay from file sensor passes made earlier in the course of the exercise), and shouted for the senior member of the Athinai staff.

He hadn't had to shout. If he'd bothered to ask Honor, she could have introduced him to the man, because the resort's manager had been standing right beside her. The two of them had already agreed upon the rough outlines of a plan to use the Navy-gathered data to guide and coordinate search and rescue operations, and they'd been working out the best way to make use of the Marines and ratings aboard the pinnaces when Novaya Tyumen intervened.

Not that the baron had cared about anything Honor might have worked out. He didn't even ask about it. He'd simply begun giving the resort manager orders, as if the man were a boot spacer on his first deployment or one of the Agursky family's lackeys back on Manticore, and Honor had seen the fury blazing even behind the manager's frantic concern for the scores of guests and employees still unaccounted for. The man had looked at her for a moment, his face stark with his desire to appeal to her, but she had shaken her head minutely. She was fairly certain Novaya Tyumen hadn't seen her gesture—not that she'd really cared particularly. But the manager had, and after an instant, he'd nodded back ever so slightly. Finding and rescuing people mattered more than who got the credit for it—to the two of them, at least—and Novaya Tyumen was clearly capable of obstructing any rescue efforts which didn't bear his own personal stamp of approval.

And so Honor had found herself shunted aside. Technically, as the second ranking naval officer present, she was Novaya Tyumen's second-in-command. In fact, he'd chosen to completely—and pointedly—ignore her. He'd cut her entirely out of the loop and made it perfectly clear that he was about as likely to cut off his own right hand as he was to give her any share of the 'glory' which might flow from the operation. It sickened her that anyone could be so petty as to think about stupid personal vendettas—especially vendettas which had nothing at all to do with anything anyone had ever done to them in the first place—when innocent lives were at risk. But Novaya Tyumen clearly could be and was, and furious though she was at the calculated insult, she had no intention of fighting him over it. As Broadsword's executive officer, she supposed she might have ignored him where her own people were concerned, but only a third of the pinnaces and personnel assigned to the drop exercise had come from her ship, and he obviously assumed that everything assigned to the exercise was still his to command. Honor was fairly certain that if she'd appealed to Captain Tammerlane again, her CO would have slapped Novaya Tyumen down once more . . . but she couldn't be certain. Novaya Tyumen was the senior officer present, after all. Under the circumstances, it made a lot of sense to leave him alone as long as he got the job done, however infuriating Honor might find his treatment of her or her people. And it was also true that the Service remembered an officer who made a habit of going over a superior's head or behind her back. However justified her actions, anyone who got a name for stabbing her superiors in the back could expect to pay the price for it down the road. Not that Honor would have let that stop her. Or she didn't think she would have, anyway. It was just that she had no desire to get Tammerlane involved once more. She didn't need any glory, and she refused to hamper operations by fighting some sort of turf war at a moment like this.

Better one person in command, even if he's not the best person for the job, than two of us fighting each other and getting even less done, she thought bitterly. But—  

'Excuse me, Commander.'

The voice came from behind her, and she turned quickly.

The woman who had spoken had dark auburn hair, only a little longer than Honor's, and gray eyes in a face whose high cheekbones promised more than a dash of Old Earth's Slavic inheritance. The left side of her face was a mass of bruises, the eye on that side was swollen almost shut, and she listed to port as she stood there, clearly favoring her left hip. But the unbruised side of her face was tight, almost desperate, and Honor heard Nimitz make a soft, muttery-snarly sound as the other woman's emotions hammered at him.

'Yes?' Honor replied cautiously.

'Are you Commander Harrington?' the woman asked.

'Yes. Yes, I am.' Honor knew she sounded surprised by the question, because she was, but the other woman nodded as if in grim satisfaction and thrust out her right hand.

'Berczi,' she said as Honor took it. 'Major Csilla Berczi, late of Her Majesty's Marines.'

'Ah.' Honor returned her firm grip, then cocked her head to one side. 'What can I do for you, Major?'

'What I'd like best would be for you to lend me a pulser and let me have three seconds alone with that pompous, arrogant, mind-fucking son-of-a-bitch,' Berczi said, jerking her head contemptuously to where Novaya Tyumen stood giving his orders. The glare she turned upon the commander for a long, poisonous moment was not one Honor would have liked to see directed at herself, but then the other woman shook herself and forced a humorless grin. 'Short of your assistance in culling the human genotype, however, I need your help getting around the asshole, Commander.'

'My help getting around him?' Honor gazed into the other's eyes and quirked an inquiring eyebrow.

'Yes.' Berczi bit the word off, then flushed, as if ashamed of herself for showing her anger, and drew a deep breath. 'Frank Stimson was one of my platoon commanders when he was a brand new lieutenant, Commander,' she said, pointing with her chin—much less violently, this time—to where the commander of Broadsword's Marine detachment had set up his own CP to pass on Novaya Tyumen's orders. 'When I asked him if there was anyone reasonable involved in managing this cluster fuck, he told me to talk to you.'

'About?' Honor asked coolly, refusing to allow herself to be drawn into agreeing (openly, at least) with Berczi's obvious opinion of Novaya Tyumen.

'The beginners' slopes,' Berczi said, and this time there was a raw, urgent note in her voice. 'They're back that way—' she waved a hand in the direction of the avalanche's worst devastation '—and I can't get that bastard'—fresh venom crackled in her voice as she jabbed a thumb at Novaya Tyumen —'to even authorize search parties for them!'

'What?' Honor blinked.

'He says he doesn't have the resources,' Berczi said viciously. 'According to him,