Worlds of Honor

Testaniere wondered what was showing on his face. Within, he knew how the financial bureaucrats had felt before Haven began its interstellar expansion, trying to provide more and more benefits to more and more Dolists from a shrinking budget.

He would have to ask Pescu privately how the retraining of the Field Police was coming. They might still be slow to come in out of the rain, but at least they were here and not somewhere else.

To Major Ryder, Director Simpson looked years older than he had three days ago, which was impossible. Or maybe not. She looked at the other three faces on the Director's side of the table, and decided that if she had spent three days in conference with any, let alone all, of them, she might have looked her chronological age!

The Deputy Directors for Physical Training, Tactical Training, and Supply were as grim and granite-faced a lot as Ryder had never wished to see this side of the Final Judgement. Did the Conforming Free Kirkers end up looking stern because they spent too much time thinking about that Judgement? Theology had never been one of Ryder's strong points; she hoped to conclude her mission on Silvestria before it became a survival skill.

Simpson nodded to the Supply Deputy. She brushed her graying auburn hair back from a forehead that must have once been seriously burned, and frowned.

'You are asking for an odd mix of resources. Not excessive, I think, but I would like you to explain the reason for each component.'

Ryder looked at Chung. They exchanged smiles, for reasons that they could never tell these earnest Republicans. They had worked out the Table of Organization and Equipment, after consulting with their own people, on a portable computer. They'd propped the computer up at one end of the bed and themselves at the other. In between was a take-out fish and chips dinner. Their clothing lay on the floor, beside an insulated bucket with three liters of chilled ale.

It was quite the most comfortable planning session that Ryder had ever attended. A few more of them, and she might even be reconciled to combining briefings and pillow talk.

The four elements of the proposed force were two hundred fifty picked Sea Fencibles, a dozen fishing boats, two fish-factory ships, and enough air freighters, small enough to land on the decks of the factory ships, to carry the Sea Fencibles three hundred klicks to Buwayjon.

The air freighters would be borrowed from the fishing industry, which got priority in modern technology whenever possible. They were slow, clumsy, and low-ceilinged, with robust hulls of local aluminum alloy and fiberglass built around imported power plants and electronics. But like anything built to haul cargo bulky in proportion to its value, they also had payload capacity to spare.

'Unless somebody sees them all together, they won't connect them with the idea of a raiding force,' Chung said. 'So we are going to march—or in this case, sail—divided, and attack united.'

'Won't a new fishing fleet look suspicious all by itself?' the PT Deputy asked. He was bullet-headed but not, as far as Ryder could tell, bull-headed—or at least no more so than his colleagues. And she'd seen a tape of him working out with claymore and shield; she anticipated bruises in her first few—or first few dozen—sessions with him.

'Not with the cover story we're going to circulate,' she put in now. 'The Erewhon consul is circulating stories of a new agreement with Broadman Imports for exploiting the icefish grounds off the Strathspey Islands. That means recommissioning a whole bunch of the old turtlebacks, which can hide just about anything below decks.'

'The correct noun of association for ships is squadron or fleet,' the PT Deputy said firmly. 'And as one who hauled nets from one of those turtlebacks as a boy, I can assure you that soldiers riding aboard them will be practicing mortification of the flesh.'

'I don't believe this is being organized as a pleasure cruise,' the Supply Deputy said. 'But I really must ask. Will two hundred and fifty people be enough?'

'If we have surprise, half that many could do the job,' Ryder said. 'If we lose surprise, or Euvinophan's infantry are in place, twice that many won't be enough.'

That reduced everyone to silence. Including me, Ryder realized. I hope they don't have any more questions, because I'm damned if I could answer them. 

Then three graying and one bald head nodded. 'We will authorize in the name of the Republic all resources for this mission, as you have requested,' Simpson said. 'May the Lord Mighty in Battle watch over you, keep you in His hand, and give you the courage and skill you will need to bring victory in His cause.'

Now, if I was just as sure as these people are, that we did have God on ourside. . . . 

THREE

The big truck backed in under the camouflage net and squealed to a stop. Half a dozen Sea Fencibles ran up to lift off the crates of potatoes that hid the crates of ammunition. Then Director Simpson himself climbed out of the cab.

Shuna Ryder's first thought was to call SBA Bexo. Simpson didn't look fit to be out of bed, let alone this far north in the late summer, with so much water dripping off the trees that you couldn't tell if it was raining or not.

But he smiled as he came up and shook her hand. Most of the Sea Fencibles stopped, nodded, and went back to work. They were grasping the notion of when to salute and when not to, as well as a few other military skills. She only hoped the improvement in their marksmanship hadn't cost the Republic more of its ammunition reserve than it could afford.

Ryder pushed aside the blackout curtain and led Simpson to the observation platform, overlooking the covered hundred meters of creek that served as a workshop. Five of the wooden-hulled turtleback fishing boats were moored to the banks, with more Sea Fencibles and a few selected boatyard workers swarming over them. Saws, sanders, and paint sprayers buzzed, whined, and hissed, and through the hatch of one boat the glow of a welding torch suggested work on the engine or one of the steel tanks being converted for heads.

'I worked in a boatyard after I left school,' Simpson said, his mouth nearly touching Ryder's ear so that she could hear him over the din. 'I remember working on some of these boats, converting them from steam to diesel. It is good to see them doing more than rot in the rain, even if this were not God's work they will be about.'

Ryder could have wished that God or somebody had made the boats larger or the Sea Fencibles smaller. Only two hundred twenty-seven people with their personal weapons and gear would be riding in the disguised boats. The other twenty-five would have to ride by air, along with most of the heavy weapons.

But the demolition charges were going in the turtlebacks. The Sea Fencibles were not going to be separated from their personal weapons or the explosives. Not if they had to swim in with them on their backs!

'I hope we bring back not only the people but the transport,' Ryder said. 'God will not feed families when the fishermen can't bring home their catch.'

Apparently this was not heresy. Simpson nodded. 'We can cut back on our catch for export, if necessary. Indeed, the war itself may make this necessary. If the godforsaken Havenites are really going to commission privateers, we may be living plain and short once again, until there is peace.'

He took Ryder's hands in his, which somehow were not shaking and felt stronger than they had looked. 'Even if nothing came back but yourselves, it would be worth the cost. Our people are hardy, but if Euvinophan held Port Malcolm and the passes, he would have four-fifths of our industry and two-thirds of our people hostage. Guerrilla warfare under those circumstances might cost us more than even Peep tyranny—if King Bira allowed the Peeps a free reign in the first place.'

Ryder wanted to suggest that the Republicans consider ways of playing off a victorious Carl Euvinophan