The Shadow of Saganami

'What about the rest of the Squadron?'

' Aegis is the closest thing we've got to combat-capable, Sir, and she's down to sixty-two missiles and five grasers. Warlock doesn't have a single operable weapon left, and Aria is almost that bad. Lieutenant Rossi says-'

'Excuse me, Skipper.' Terekhov looked up. It was Jefferson Kobe.

'Yes, Jeff? What is it?'

'Sir, Helen's arrays are picking up several Monican warships headed our way. It looks like half a dozen LACs, four destroyers, and a pair of light cruisers. And we've just received a message from an Admiral Bourmont. He demands that we surrender or be destroyed.'

Terekhov looked at him, then at Nagchaudhuri. The lieutenant commander's expression was tight, his eyes dark, and Terekhov understood that, too. Obsolete though the regular Monican Navy might be, it was more than adequate to destroy his own shattered survivors.

'How long for their first unit to get here?'

'Toby says four hours for a zero/zero, Sir. Three hours, fifty minutes if they settle for a flyby firing pass.'

'Very well.' Terekhov strode out of the briefing room onto Hexapuma's bridge and waved for Kobe to resume his station at Communications. He felt his bridge crew's tension, felt them wanting to turn and look at him even as discipline kept them focused on their displays. These people hovered on the ragged brink of exhaustion, and they knew as well as he that they couldn't fight the Monicans.

'First, Jeff,' Terekhov said calmly, 'get Commander Badmachin on the FTL.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

It took less than a minute to make the connection. Hexapuma and her three battered consorts floated in space, less than nine million kilometers from Eroica Station with zero relative motion. That put the ammunition ship, still hovering at the hyper limit, 12.2 million kilometers further out.

'Yes, Captain?' Badmachin's expression was eloquent with concern.

'Captain Badmachin, I want you to join the rest of the Squadron here at your best speed.'

' There , Sir?'

'Yes. You should have time to join us, drop off a couple of hundred more pods, and still return across the hyper limit before any Monican unit is in range to fire on you. Please get underway immediately.'

'Yes, Sir. Immediately!' she said.

'Good. Terekhov, clear.' He looked back at Kobe. 'Now record for Admiral Bourmont, please.'

'Yes, Sir. Standing by to record.'

'Admiral Bourmont,' Terekhov faced the visual pickup, his shoulders square, his expression confident, and his voice was icy. 'You've called upon my Squadron to surrender. Unfortunately, I can't do that. I came here to do a job-to neutralize the battlecruisers your star nation has been assembling to attack mine. I have not yet completed that task. Two of your battlecruisers remain undamaged, because I refrained from firing upon them in light of their proximity to the civilian portions of your Eroica Station complex. Should any of your armed vessels continue to approach my own command-and we have all of them under surveillance as I speak-I will have no option but to complete my task before withdrawing into hyper before any of your warships can reach me . I regret to say it, but this will require a bombardment of the battlecruisers in question with contact nuclear warheads, and it will be impossible for me to permit the evacuation of your civilian workforce first.'

He heard someone inhale sharply behind him, but his own expression never wavered.

'Should you choose to stand down your warships, and to maintain the present status quo unchanged pending the arrival of the approaching Manticoran relief force, I will be spared that unpleasant necessity. Should you choose not to stand down your warships and maintain the status quo , I will proceed with the bombardment. And under no circumstances will I permit the evacuation of your civilians. The choice is yours, Sir. You have two hours in which to make it and get your decision to me. Terekhov, clear.'

He stopped and looked at Kobe. The lieutenant looked severely shaken, but he nodded.

'Good copy, Sir,' he said with only the slightest tremor in his voice.

'Very well. Attach the latest tactical summary, including the positions of all of their units we currently have under observation. Then send it, please.'

'Aye, aye, Sir.'

'Now, Amal,' Terekhov said calmly, turning back to Nagchaudhuri, 'I believe you have a report to complete. We'll have time for that before Volcano arrives. If you please.'

He walked back across the deathly silent bridge to the briefing room, his boot heels sounding clearly on the decksole, and Nagchaudhuri followed after only a brief hesitation. So did Van Dort. He hadn't been invited, but Terekhov wasn't surprised at all to see him after the hatch closed and he turned back to Nagchaudhuri.

'Yes, Bernardus?' he asked in that same, calm voice.

'Aivars, you are bluffing, aren't you? You wouldn't really massacre all those civilians?'

'Bernardus, we can't leave. Monica's squarely in the middle of a hyper-space grav wave. The only two ships we have left who can still generate Warshawski sails are Aegis and Volcano , and they don't begin to have the life-support to take all our survivors with them. And what do you think will happen to my people if I allow them to fall into Monican hands before the relief force gets here?'

Van Dort didn't answer the question. He didn't have to.

'But what if there isn't a relief force?' he asked instead.

'There will be,' Terekhov said, with the certitude of God's own prophet. 'And when it arrives, my people will be alive to see it.'

'But you won't really bombard the battlecruisers?'

'On the contrary, Bernardus,' Captain Aivars Alexsovitch Terekhov, Royal Manticoran Navy, said coldly. 'If these bastards call my 'bluff,' I will blow their goddamned battlecruisers, and every civilian around them, to hell.'

Epilogue

'So you're finally ready, Captain,' Vice Admiral Quentin O'Malley observed.

'Yes, Sir,' Aivars Terekhov replied.

'I imagine you'll be glad to get home,' O'Malley said.

'Yes, Sir,' Terekhov repeated. 'Very glad. Ericsson and the other repair ships have done a remarkable job, but she really needs a full-scale shipyard.'

O'Malley nodded. In the three T-months since Rear Admiral Khumalo's arrival in Monica, the Talbott Station support ships had patched HMS Hexapuma up enough to at least get her home. Which had been just as remarkable a job as Terekhov had implied. They hadn't had much to work with, after all.

Of Terekhov's impromptu squadron, only Aegis and Hexapuma would ever return to service. Aria and Warlock were simply too old, too obsolescent, to be worth repairing, even if they hadn't been so severely mangled in the Battle of Monica. Warlock , at least, would be returning to the Star Kingdom under Commnder George Hibachi's command and her own power in company with Hexapuma , but only because repairing her alpha nodes had cost less than the Navy would be able to reclaim from her hull when she was broken up.

Yet the name Warlock would not disappear from the Royal Manticoran Navy. As Ito Anders had once said, HMS Warlock had not been fortunate in her commanding officers or her reputation. But Anders had repaired that fault. It had cost him his life, but his ship had redeemed herself. Like every unit of Terekhov's 'Squadron,' her name had been added to the List of Honor. Those names