The Shadow of Saganami

imposed. Minimum message turnaround between here and the system government is over eighty-three minutes. I assure you messages will be sent immediately, relaying your insulting and arrogant demand and requesting instructions, but I cannot hear back from my government in less than an hour and twenty minutes. Hegedusic, clear.'

'I understand your communication problems, Admiral,' Terekhov said after the inevitable delay. 'Nonetheless, my time limit stands. It isn't negotiable. Terekhov, clear.'

'I don't have the authority to give such orders, Captain! I would be... strongly disinclined to do so in any case, but as the situation stands, I couldn't even if I wanted to. Hegedusic, clear.'

'Admiral, you're a naval officer. As such, you know there are times to observe the legal niceties, and times that isn't possible. This is one of the latter. You may not have the legal authority to evacuate your post, but you do have the de facto authority. And you also have the responsibility to preserve the lives of your personnel in a situation in which you literally cannot fight back. I urge you to consider whether your moral responsibility lies in slavish obedience to the law, or in ensuring your people don't die pointlessly. Terekhov, clear.'

'If we're going to speak about moral responsibilities, Captain, what about your responsibility not to slaughter people who, by your own statement, can't even threaten your own command, simply because their oaths to their own government require them to remain at their posts until legally relieved by competent authority? Hegedusic, clear.'

'You have a point, Admiral,' Terekhov conceded. 'However, my own duty leaves me no alternative. And honesty compels me to add that neither I nor any other Manticoran officer have conspired with genetic slavers, pirates, terrorists, and mass murderers to commit acts of war on the sovereign territories of at least two independent star nations. Your government has done precisely that. My responsibility to see to it that those unprovoked and murderous assaults end now overrides any responsibility I may have towards your personnel. And I would further add, Sir, that I'm already holding my fire when you're well within my effective range specifically in order to avoid any unnecessary loss of life. That is the only concession I am prepared or able to make. So, I repeat, I require your immediate stand-down and evacuation. You now have fifty-one minutes to comply. Terekhov, clear and out.'

The com screen went blank, and when Hegedusic looked at Levakonic, he saw his own amazement in the Solarian's face. How? How could the Manties have figured out what was happening? And what the hell was he supposed to do about it?

* * *

'Approaching turnover in seven minutes, Sir,' Tobias Wright said, and Terekhov nodded.

Some of the sensor remotes speeding out in front of the Squadron had peeled off to put Eroica Station under close-range observation. Hexapuma and her consorts had been accelerating in- system for over seventeen minutes. Their initial velocity had dropped to just over 2,175 KPS before they parted company from Volcano, but in another seven minutes, they would reach their peak velocity of 7,190 KPS and begin the thirty-four minutes and fifty-nine seconds of deceleration which would bring them to rest relative to Eroica Station at a range of eight million kilometers.

Admiral Hegedusic had forty-three minutes to begin -evacuating.

'Do you think he's going to give in, Skipper?' Ansten FitzGerald asked quietly from the small com screen beside Terekhov's knee.

'I don't know. I hope so.'

'He didn't sound very happy about the notion, Sir,' FitzGerald observed, and Terekhov surprised himself with a short, sharp laugh.

'You've been practicing understatement with Ms. Zilwicki again, haven't you, Ansten?' he said, then shrugged. 'I expected a lot of what he said. Usually, you don't get to be an admiral if you make a habit of caving in easily. And those ships have to represent a dream come true for any admiral in any Verge navy. Not to mention the fact that the Monican government probably has a nasty habit of shooting people it considers guilty of cowardice. He's almost got to stall as long as he can.'

'What if he comes back at the last minute with an offer to comply, Captain?' Van Dort asked, careful to observe the military proprieties under the current circumstances.

'If it's accompanied by an immediate start to the evacuation, I'll grant him an extension. If it isn't, I'll open fire.'

Van Dort nodded slowly, and there was a different look in his eyes as he gazed at Terekhov and saw a side of him he hadn't previously met. He'd never made the mistake of imagining -Terekhov would flinch from any duty, however grim. But until this moment, he'd never truly realized just how dangerous a killer lurked inside his friend.

But Ansten FitzGerald wasn't surprised. He remembered the Nuncio System.

* * *

'Sir! Sir, the Manties have just made turnover!'

Hegedusic's head came up, and he strode quickly over to the officer who had spoken. He leaned over the lieutenant's shoulder, studying his plot.

'Where's his zero-velocity point at current deceleration?'

'Approximately eight million kilometers out, Admiral.'

'Oh, is it now?' Hegedusic murmured in a soft, hungry tone, and turned to look at Levakonic. The Technodyne executive looked tense and unhappy, but as he met Hegedusic's eyes, they both smiled slowly.

* * *

Abigail Hearns rested her forearms lightly on the arms of her command chair. She could feel Helen's tension beside her, ratcheting steadily higher as the Squadron decelerated towards its attack position. She remembered the question Ragnhild had asked after their firing pass on Bogey Three at Nuncio, the question about how many people they'd just killed, and knew the same thoughts were passing through her surviving midshipwoman's mind at this moment.

If there was a single gram of cowardice in Helen Zilwicki, Abigail Hearns had never seen it. But this was even more cold-blooded and methodical than Captain Terekhov's ambush of the rogue Peeps in Nuncio. At least the Peeps had gotten into a range where they could theoretically have fired back. Eroica Station wouldn't have that option. If this Admiral Hegedusic failed to yield, hundreds, possibly thousands, of his personnel were going to be killed by weapons to which they couldn't even respond. It was a horrifying thought, and she wondered if she should say something to Helen about it.

But what could she say? She wasn't positive how she felt about it, so how could she know what to say to someone else?

There were times, as Brother Albert, her old childhood confessor, had warned her there would be, when the teachings of Father Church and the brutal requirements of the profession of arms clashed. When the desire of a loving God for all of His children to live and grow under His gentle Testing collided in a universe of imperfect humans with the unyielding fact that for some of His children to live, others of them must die. That, Brother Albert had told her gently when she first admitted that she hungered for a naval career, would become part of her Test if her wish were granted. And, he'd warned her, it was a fortunate warrior indeed-or else a madman-who was never forced to confront the ambiguity of violence. The suspicion that it was expediency, and his own desire to live, and not morality or justice or even the defense of his own nation and family, which truly drove him to kill. The selfish desire to survive, not the noble willingness to risk death for what he believed in.

Brother Albert had been right. And as Abigail had studied her trade, mastered the professional requirements of a tactical officer, she'd come to realize that the highest duty of an officer wasn't to engage in honorable, face-to-face combat. It was to take her opponent by surprise. To ambush him. To shoot him in the back, without warning, without the ability to return her fire. Because if he had that opportunity, some of her people would die. And if she gave him that opportunity when she didn't have to, then the responsibility for those deaths would be hers.

It was a bitter lesson, one she'd accepted intellectually while still at Saganami Island, and one which had been turned into polished steel and hammered home on the surface of a planet called Refuge.

Yet this was different. The disparity in weapon technology meant there could be no possibility of return fire.