Mission of Honor-ARC (56 page)

Although Higgins respected Alexander-Harrington's accomplishments, he was also one of those officers who was well aware of the role the media had played in creating the legend of "the Salamander." To her credit, she seemed to genuinely attempt to avoid that sort of media adulation, but coupled with her stature on Grayson and her political status as one of the main leaders of the Opposition to the High Ridge Government, it had turned her into the next best thing to a physical avatar of the goddess of war as far as the Manticoran public was concerned. And, for that matter, as far as most of the
Navy
was concerned. Which had made stepping into her shoes an interesting experience.

It also accounted for some of his current apprehension. After all, no matter how well he did, he was going to find himself being compared to the memory of Sebastian D'Orville, who'd died leading the previous Home Fleet into headlong battle, or of Duchess Harrington, whom Higgins had relieved as Home Fleet's CO, and whose Eighth Fleet had saved the home system from Operation Beatrice. And, if he were going to continue to be honest, part of that apprehension also stemmed from what had happened in Grendelsbane. There was no point trying to pretend the experience hadn't scarred him. He didn't think it had left him doubting his judgment, but it
had
left him dreading a repeat performance. He would have felt much more comfortable if he'd been able to convince himself lightning didn't really strike twice in the same place. Unfortunately, it did. So instead, he spent his time telling himself disasters like Grendelsbane weren't really lightning bolts, so he didn't have to worry about stupid proverbs.

Which,
he reflected
, makes me feel
ever
so much better when I think about it.

His lips twitched as that brought him almost full circle through the cycle of thoughts which always ran through his mind at moments like this. It was fortunate his sense of humor, at least, had survived Grendelsbane and the Battle of Manticore, he supposed. It was a dryer and sometimes more biting sense of humor than it once had been, but it was still there, and he suspected he was going to need it, now that Lacoön One was in effect. The League wasn't going to be happy when it discovered Manticore had closed the Junction to all Solly traffic. Or that nondiscretionary recall orders had been issued to every Manticoran merchantman in Solarian space. Or, now that he thought about it, that orders had been dispatched to every station commander to take whatever steps seemed necessary to protect Manticoran ships, property, and lives from Solarian action.

No, they weren't going to be very happy about that at all, he thought. In fact, he reflected, as he looked at his flagship's crest, mounted on the flag bridge bulkhead beside the lift doors, a lot of them were going to be taking his flagship's name in vain when they heard about it.

HMS
Inconceivable
. He wasn't sure what he thought of "inconceivable" as the name for one of Her Majesty's starships, but it was certainly a fitting appellation for
his
flagship, under the circumstances.

* * *

"I don't suppose you've got that flight schedule for me yet," a patient, long-suffering voice said as Colonel Andrew LaFollet of the Harrington Steadholders Guard stepped through the office door, and he looked at the speaker with an artfully innocent expression.

"Flight schedule?" he inquired blankly. "Which flight schedule would that be?"

His sister glared at him, and the treecat on the end of Miranda LaFollet's desk bleeked a laugh.

"The one," she said with a ferocious glower, "for the trip to Sphinx. You
do
remember the trip to Sphinx? The one for Claire's birthday?"

"Oh,
that
schedule!" He smiled at her. "What makes you think I might have it? You're the one in charge of things around here when the Steadholder and Mac are away, not me!"

Miranda glowered some more, but the smile twitching at the corners of her mouth gave her away. After a moment, she gave up. There was no point trying to change her big brother at this point. Besides, she'd be disappointed if she succeeded . . . she thought.

"All right," she said. "You win.
I'll
make the flight arrangements, but I can't do that until you hand me the security plan. So where is it?"

"Oh, well, I've got
that
right here," he told her with a chuckle and tossed the chip folio across to her. She missed the catch, but Farragut reached up a long-fingered true-hand and plucked it neatly out of the air.

"Thanks," she told the 'cat as he handed it across to her. "Nice to see that at least some male members of some species are capable of showing a modicum of courtesy," she added, looking rather pointedly at Andrew.

"Ha! He's just sucking up to his celery source!"

Miranda laughed, and Andrew winked at her, then waved casually and headed back out of her office. She smiled after him for a few moments, then shook her head and inserted to the data chip into her reader. A file header appeared on her display, and her smile faded into a frown of intensity as she studied the file's contents.

She supposed it was entirely possible—even likely—that a great many Manticorans would find it more than mildly ridiculous for someone to file a security plan that ran to better than fifty pages just for a day trip to take a ten-month-old baby and his grandmother to his aunt's birthday party. Miranda LaFollet, on the other hand, did not, because the grandmother in question was her Steadholder's mother, and the ten-month-old was Raoul Alfred Alastair Alexander-Harrington, who would someday, Tester willing,
be
her Steadholder.

Not that she'd be around to see that day. At least, she hoped she wouldn't, she thought with a familiar edge of bittersweetness. She'd been just too old for prolong when the treaty of alliance with Manticore brought it to the planet Grayson. At fifty, she was thirteen years younger than Lady Harrington, but if anyone had simply looked at the two of them, they would have thought the interval was twice as great . . . and in the opposite direction. Miranda would have been more than human if there hadn't been times she resented the extended lifespans Manticorans took for granted, but she'd truly come to terms with it. Or she thought she had, at least. And if neither she nor Andrew would ever be able to receive the prolong treatments, their younger siblings, like her brother Micah, certainly had.

She sat gazing sightlessly at the display for a couple of seconds, then shook her head with a snort. She had more important things to do than sit around brooding, she told herself tartly, and returned her attention to Andrew's plan.

* * *

"—
stupidest
damned idea I've ever heard of! It's not like we don't have other things—
worthwhile
things—we could be doing instead, after all! And if anything ever
really
happens to the station, who the hell's going to have
time
to run for a frigging life pod in the first place?"

Ensign Paulo d'Arezzo felt a very strong desire to throttle Lieutenant Anthony Berkeley. Unfortunately, he lacked Helen Zilwicki's aptitude for hand-to-hand mayhem. Or perhaps fortunately, given the fact that Berkeley was a full senior-grade lieutenant, which would have brought up all sorts of sticky things about "striking a superior officer, the Star Empire then being in a state of war." He rather doubted a court-martial would feel "because the deceased was such a loudmouthed moron" constituted sufficient justification for violating Article Nine. Although if the members of the court actually
knew
Berkeley . . . .

"And
another
thing," the lieutenant went on, waving his right hand, index finger extended to emphasize his point as he shared his insights, "how the hell much did this little brain fart
cost?
I mean, launching every single pod the station
has?
Jesus! Just recertifying all of them is gonna take weeks, and you
know
they're gonna downcheck at least some of them!"

You know
, Paulo thought,
it was a lot more fun aboard
Hexapuma
even when people were shooting at us! If Helen had to get herself sent back off to Talbott without me, why couldn't I have at least stayed aboard the ship, like Aikawa? For that matter, why couldn't I have stayed
anywhere
that would have kept me away from a klutz like Berkeley?

Deep inside, he rather suspected he would have been grumpy anyplace they sent him if Helen wasn't around. That thought was one he tried not to examine too closely, though. It still made him . . . uncomfortable after he'd spent so many years running away from any sort of serious emotional entanglement. But the truth was that her absence left an empty place down inside him—one he'd never realized was there when all he'd been able to think about was the attractive physical "packaging" Manpower, Incorporated, had designed into someone it had intended to sell as a pleasure slave. A sex toy, really.

But, be that as it might, assigning him to work directly under Anthony Berkeley had to come under the heading of cruel and unusual punishment. If there'd been any real justice in the galaxy, he'd have been assigned to Admiral Yeager's Research and Development Division, with Captain Lewis.
That
would have been interesting, especially for someone with Paulo's natural bent for the electronic warfare officer's career track. But, no. In their infinite wisdom, the powers-that-were at the Bureau of Personnel had decided he and Senior Chief Wanderman should get a little hands-on time with the fabrication side. Which, little though he cared to admit it, might actually contain at least a modicum of rationality. It never hurt for an EWO to have at least some familiarity with the nuts and bolts of his hardware, after all. But there
had
to be some way for him to get that familiarity without putting up with Berkeley!

If only there were some way he could quietly and discreetly leave the small classroom in which their party of evacuees been instructed to wait. Unfortunately, there wasn't one, and Berkeley happened to be the senior officer present, which put him in charge of their small detachment. If Paulo tried to sneak out, the lieutenant would demand to know where he was going, and somehow "anywhere
you
aren't" didn't seem the most diplomatic possible response.
Truthful
, yes; diplomatic, no.

"And if we just
had
to do something this stupid," Berkeley continued, "at least we could have done it when we weren't—"

"Excuse me, Lieutenant," a contralto voice said from the doorway, "but exactly what 'stupid' something did you have in mind?"

Berkeley's mouth shut with an almost audible click, and he spun towards the slender, dark-haired commander standing in the open door with her head cocked to one side.

"I, uh, didn't see you there, Commander McGillicuddy," he said.

"No," Commander Anastasia McGillicuddy agreed pleasantly. "I don't suppose you did. However, I was just passing through when I heard what sounded remarkably like a raised voice. I was down at the end of the hall, you understand, so I wasn't completely certain that was what I was hearing. I decided to find out."

Her smile was as pleasant as her tone, but her brown eyes were cold, and the much taller and bulkier Berkeley seemed to shrink slightly.

"As I drew closer, I realized you were availing yourself of this opportunity to continue the instruction of the junior officers entrusted to your care," she went on. "I was impressed by your apparent vigor. Obviously, you'd been discussing a subject you felt strongly about. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to find out what it was."

"Ma'am, I was just—that is, well . . . ." Berkeley's abortive response trailed off, and despite himself, Paulo actually felt a feeble—
very
feeble—flicker of sympathy.

He throttled it without difficulty.

"Should I assume, Lieutenant, that you question Vice Admiral Faraday's priorities?" McGillicuddy asked softly.

Berkeley said nothing at all, and her nostrils flared. Then she looked past Berkeley to the junior officers and enlisted waiting in the classroom. She considered them briefly, then returned her attention to Berkeley.

"Since you feel qualified to critique this exercise, Lieutenant," she told him, "I'll arrange for you to present your view of it directly to Captain Sugihara." Berkeley's fair complexion turned considerably fairer at the mention of Captain Brian Sugihara, Rear Admiral Trammell's XO. "In the meantime, I strongly suggest you give some consideration to the appropriateness of your present forum. Especially considering that you happen to be the senior officer present. You might want to spend the time more profitably doing something like . . . oh, I don't know. Considering your report to Captain Sugihara, perhaps. In fact, you might want to give a little thought to whether or not Article Ten figures into your thinking, as well."

Paulo felt his lips trying to purse in a silent whistle as that last salvo landed. Obviously McGillicuddy had heard even more—and was even more pissed off—than he'd thought. From the little Paulo had seen of her, she didn't seem like the sort who normally screamed at a subordinate—even a
stupid
subordinate—in front of that subordinate's juniors. The fact that Berkeley had ticked her off enough to do that was sufficiently significant on its own, but her last sentence had been so pointed not even Berkeley could miss the implication. Article Ten was the article which forbade actions or speech prejudicial to discipline and the chain of command. If Berkeley was brought up on that charge and it went into his personnel record . . . .

McGillicuddy held Berkeley's eyes for another few seconds, then nodded, glanced once at the breathlessly watching group of JGs, ensigns, and enlisted, and left without another word.

* * *

"Well,
I'm
undoubtedly the most unpopular officer in
Weyland
," Claudio Faraday said with an air of satisfaction. "For that matter, I might well be the most unpopular officer in the entire Beta subsystem!"

"I think that might be going just a
bit
far, Sir," Marcus Howell replied. "At least as far as the entire subsystem's concerned. Although, now that I think about it, they probably
aren't
too fond of you down on Gryphon at the moment, either."