In Fire Forged Page 18

  She hated pirates.

  She’d always hated pirates. Even when she’d been a little girl, first discovering historical fiction, she’d never confused them with the jolly buccaneers of certain particularly bad novels (thanks in no small part to her father’s experiences during his military career). Even if she’d ever been inclined to think romantic thoughts about them, her own middy cruise here in the welcoming Silesian Confederacy would have cured her of the temptation forever.

  So far, this afternoon’s experience hadn’t done much to change her mind. Judging from the reports she’d already received, it wasn’t going to, either.

  “How bad is it, Everett?”

  Years as a Queen’s officer kept Commander Honor Harrington’s Sphinxian accent crisp and clear, unshadowed by emotion, as she asked the question. But her brown eyes were hard with the anger of bitter experience as she gazed at the tactical display and the icon of the “freighter” flashing the transponder of the Confederacy Merchant Ship Evita.

  She rather doubted that was the ship’s real name, but it would do.

  “Not good, Ma’am,” Lieutenant Everett Janacek, RMMC, the youthful—extraordinarily youthful, actually—commanding officer of HMS Hawkwing’s embarked Marine platoon, replied from Evita over the com link from his battle armor.

  Janacek, like Honor herself, was a third-generation prolong recipient, and he’d come aboard less than three T-months earlier, as Lieutenant Shafiqa ibnat Musaykah’s replacement when ibnat Musaykah went home for promotion and command of her own company. Honor was still getting to know him, and she’d found it necessary more than once to remind herself that whatever he might sometimes seem like, he was a commissioned Marine officer, not a friendly puppy still growing into its outsized feet. At twenty-three, he looked like a well grown pre-prolong sixteen-year-old, and she often felt he seemed as young as he looked. Without the third-generation therapies developed to accelerate the maturation of the physical brain and neural processes—and, she reminded herself, gestation periods—which prolong would otherwise have retarded (which had been the real obstacle to administering prolong in mid or even early adolescence), he would have been, but not today. If he’d been more ancient than Methuselah, he would have sounded old and bitter beyond his years today.

  “There hasn’t been any resistance since we came on board, Ma’am,” he continued. “These…people aren’t stupid enough to try something like that against battle armor. But we’ve found prisoners. A lot of prisoners, I’m afraid.”

  He paused, and Honor felt her treecat companion, Nimitz, press comfortingly against the side of her neck as she closed her eyes.

  “Let me guess,” she said, and her soprano was calm, almost dispassionate. “These are the people they kept alive for technical support.” Despite herself, her firm mouth grimaced. “Among other things.”

  “That’s what it looks like, Ma’am.” Janacek’s voice was much grimmer and harsher than Honor’s had been. Of course, he was standing there actually looking at the pirates’ captives. “A couple of them are pretty far gone,” he continued. “They don’t even seem to realize who we are. I think they think we’re just members of the ship’s crew they haven’t met yet. That’s…pretty bad, Ma’am.” He swallowed, and she heard him draw a deep breath before he continued. “Some of the others are a lot more together than that, though. According to them, they’re the ‘lucky’ ones.”

  “And they probably are, Everett.”

  This time Honor allowed herself to sigh. She also shook her head, although Janacek had no visual of her on his helmet com.

  Actually, she knew, Hawkwing had been more fortunate than usual to find any captives—however badly abused they might have been—to rescue. Quite a few pirates tended to take a page from genetic slavers when they realized they might be boarded by a warship. Inconvenient witnesses tossed out an airlock might very well never be noticed at all, especially by the sort of sensor techs one all too frequently encountered in the Silesian Confederacy Navy. Of course, in Honor Harrington’s opinion, there wasn’t much difference between a pirate and a slaver; scratch the surface of one of them, and you’d find the other close under the skin. That was one reason she’d identified herself as a Manticoran as soon as she summoned Evita to surrender. The Royal Manticoran Navy had adopted a simple policy: if slavers or pirates put slaves or captives out an airlock, the slavers or pirates in question followed as soon after as possible.

  You just have to find an argument they can understand, I suppose, she thought coldly.

  “I assume that, with Her Majesty’s Marines’ normal efficiency, you’ve thoroughly searched the ship?” she went on out loud after a moment in a deliberately lighter tone.

  “Yes, Ma’am. KK—I mean Platoon Sergeant Keegan—took personal charge of that.”

  Honor nodded. Kayleigh Keegan (also known as “Gunny Keegan” or, more informally, simply as “KK”) was Janacek’s platoon sergeant, the senior noncom of Hawkwing’s Marine detachment. She’d been in the Royal Manticoran Marine Corps since Everett Janacek’s tenth birthday, and her expertise in bringing along young and very junior Marine lieutenants was one reason she’d been assigned to a ship as small (and elderly) as Hawkwing. If Gunny Keegan said a ship had been “thoroughly searched,” then that ship had, indeed, been thoroughly searched. A few stray microbes might have escaped her attention, but Honor wouldn’t have cared to place any wagers on it.

  “We turned up a couple of hideouts, but we’ve got them all in cuffs and under guard now, Ma’am,” Janacek said.

  “Good. How many warm bodies are we talking about, Everett?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have a definitive count on their prisoners yet, Ma’am,” the lieutenant said a bit apologetically. “We’re working on that, but the best I can tell you so far is that we’ve got at least thirty-five or forty of them. I do have a hard count on the pirates, though. We make it a hundred and eighty-one—and from the looks of their crew quarters, Platoon Sergeant Keegan estimates that they sailed with at least half again that many more originally.”

  Honor’s right eyebrow rose at the number. It was scarcely a total surprise, but the sheer size of the other ship’s crew would have been abundant proof of what she was even without the captives Janacek had found on board, and even without the minor fact that Hawkwing had surprised Evita in the act of firing on an Andermani merchantman.

  Honor’s own command had a total complement of less than three hundred. Of course, Hawkwing (known affectionately to her crew as the “Hawk”) was no spring chicken—in fact, she was a unit of the old Falcon class and just under forty-eight T-years old, which made her thirteen T-years older than her present commanding officer. But she was still a warship, packed full of weapons, sensor systems, communications gear, and small craft, with the large crew all of that implied.

  The vessel she’d just captured, on the other hand, had clearly started life as a standard J Class hull from one of the Timmerman Yards in the Solarian League. At four million tons, Evita dwarfed Hawkwing’s seventy thousand tons into insignificance, but freighters were basically just big empty places in which to store things, and a standard J Class’ ship’s company would have been no more than forty—fifty, at the absolute outside—despite the Solarian tendency towards manpower-intensive designs. Pirates, on the other hand, always needed redundant personnel to crew any prizes they might happen across, not to mention needing the manpower for minor chores like boarding captured ships, slaughtering their crews, raping and torturing their prisoners, or all the other little diversions they found to keep themselves entertained.

  The most immediate implication of the numbers Janecek had just given her, however, was that there was no way in the world all of those pirates and their captives could possibly be crammed aboard Hawkwing. The destroyer simply didn’t have enough life support, even if there’d been any place to physically put that many people. Which meant any prize crew she put aboard the other ship would have to be big enough to ride herd on the captured
pirates, as well as operating Evita’s essential systems, and she simply didn’t have a lot of people she could spare.

  Not without overloading everyone else even more badly, anyway, she thought with a mental grimace, then shrugged.

  It’s not as if it’s all bad, she told herself. One thing those “technical support” people are going to want is to get as far away from that ship as possible. So if I’ve got to put thirty or forty of my people over there to wind it up and make it go anyway, maybe we can clear the space to fit all of them in aboard the Hawk, at least.

  “All right, Everett,” she said. “I’ll be sending some more of our people over there to help you out and take control of the ship’s systems. I’m not sure exactly how many yet—I’ll talk that over with the exec and the master—but that shouldn’t take too long. In the meantime, get their prisoners ready to come aboard. Tell them we need our doctor to check them out.”

  “That’s going to be true enough, Ma’am,” Janacek said even more grimly. She heard him inhale again, even more deeply. “Ma’am, it looks like at least three-quarters of the people they kept alive are women.”

  “I assumed that would be the case, Everett,” Honor said gently. “Trust me, I understand—and so will Lieutenant Neukirch.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Janacek’s tone might have been just a bit less grim, but any improvement was slight. Not that Honor blamed him. For whatever reason, pirate crews tended to be heavily male in composition. As if to compensate for that, the minority of women who joined them tended to be the worst of the lot, in Honor’s opinion, but that gender inequality helped explain why pirate crews also tended to prefer keeping female technicians alive to help deal with their shipboard needs.

  After all, Honor thought harshly, they might as well keep them alive for more than one purpose. Her nostrils flared, and she gave herself a mental shake. There are times I wish we had a female surgeon aboard, but at least Mauricio’s been around the block enough times. He’s seen more than enough rape trauma out here in Silesia.

  “In the meantime,” she went on to Janacek, allowing her voice to show no trace of her thoughts, “I’m assuming your new ship’s previous owners had set up some sort of security arrangements to keep their…technicians under control?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. You might say that.”

  It was obvious from Janacek’s tone that the captives’ living conditions had been decidedly suboptimal. That was nice to know.

  “How many of your prisoners do you think you could cram into the same space if you pushed hard?”

  “At least two thirds…if we pushed hard, Ma’am. If we really pushed hard, we might even get them all in.”

  “I see.” It was obvious the lieutenant was thinking exactly what she was, Honor reflected. “I assume that by ‘really pushed hard’ you mean it would be effectively standing room only, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Honor paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, that’s a pity, but I’m afraid the security arguments for keeping them under confinement are pretty overwhelming, Lieutenant. So they’re just going to have to put up with it, aren’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so, Ma’am,” Janacek agreed without any particular sign of regret.

  “Then see to that, if you would. I’ll have the first small craft over there to lift the evacuees off as quickly as possible. Go ahead and start moving them out of the confinement area now.”

  “Aye, aye, Ma’am.”

  “Otherwise, for now, sit tight, Everett. We’ll be sending in the first reinforcements along with the evac craft.” Honor paused for a moment then smiled slightly. “You did a good job today, Lieutenant.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.” The pleasure in Janacek’s voice was obvious.

  “Harrington, clear,” she said, then turned to the two officers who’d been standing behind her listening to her conversation with Janacek.

  Lieutenant Commander Taylor Nairobi, her executive officer, was about four T-years older than she was. He was also seven centimeters shorter, with brown hair, dark eyes, and eminently forgettable features. In fact, in many ways, he had the bland, inoffensive look of a mousy little file clerk who didn’t get out much—the kind of person who was still described with the ancient word “geek.” On the other hand, those dark eyes met other people’s eyes very levelly, and they were capable of becoming extraordinarily icy when the occasion required it. No one who’d ever seen Commander Nairobi when Hawkwing went to action stations—or who’d been unfortunate enough to appear before the exec on report—was ever likely to confuse him with anything remotely mouselike. Unless, of course, the mouse in question came equipped with long, sharp fangs.

  Lieutenant Aloysius O’Neal, on the other hand, was the oldest member of Hawkwing’s complement, almost thirty T-years older than Honor. In fact, he was a first-generation prolong recipient, and his hair and bushy mustache were liberally streaked with silver. When she’d first taken command of the destroyer the better part of three T-years ago, she’d been a little afraid the absurd difference between their ages might make her uncomfortable about giving him orders—or, worse, make him resent taking her orders. But her concerns had disappeared quickly; O’Neal’s was a very reassuring, low key presence, and he’d taken the difference in their ages in stride. In fact, she wondered occasionally if the air of composed, comfortable self-sufficiency he carried around with him was the result of his having long ago accepted that he’d simply never caught the “interest” for promotion to a higher rank…or if it was the reason he’d never caught that interest.

  One thing she was positive of: if he’d only been younger, begun his career when she’d begun her own, he would never have ended up stalled as a mere lieutenant. The Royal Manticoran Navy’s worst flaw, in her opinion, had always been its susceptibility to cronyism thanks to the tradition of patronage. Junior officers with powerful patrons advanced rapidly, and when there were only so many slots to go around, that meant junior officers without powerful patrons got passed over for promotion in order to make room for the ones who did have them. The fact that the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s navy had always been decidedly on the small side, especially for a star nation with such a huge merchant marine, compounded the problem. And the introduction of first-generation prolong to the Star Kingdom seventy T-years ago had only made that situation still worse, given how long naval careers were now likely to last.

  But things were changing these days. The naval buildup King Roger had begun in response to the threat of the People’s Republic of Haven’s imperialism continued to accelerate under Queen Elizabeth, which made far more slots available than ever before. And another welcome side effect of the Navy’s rapid growth was that the officers who opposed the patronage system—and, to be fair, there’d always been more than a few of those—were beginning to pry its fingers loose from the Service’s windpipe.

  Not that they’ve managed to pull it off completely, she reminded herself grimly, remembering certain influential enemies of her own. But people like Admiral Courvoisier have made enough progress that if Al were just starting out today, there’s no way someone as good as he is would’ve gotten stuck as a lieutenant.

  There were times when she wondered (and worried about) what was going to become of O’Neal. His many years of experience, combined with his relatively low rank, made him an ideal fit as Hawkwing’s sailing master, but that position was being phased out by the Navy. It was taking longer aboard smaller starships—largely, Honor had concluded, because someone in the Admiralty recognized what a valuable learning resource veteran officers like O’Neal provided the inexperienced commanders of ships like destroyers. Yet it was happening even there, and it wouldn’t be so very much longer before there were no more sailing masters at all, so what was going to become of him once the transition was complete?

  Of course, she was probably worrying too much—her mother had certainly twitted her for that often enough! Sixty-one wasn’t even middle age for a prol
ong recipient, even a first-generation one like O’Neal. A lot of people were still coming to grips with the way prolong permitted multiple careers, but with O’Neal’s skill set, he’d be invaluable to any merchant shipping line. And if he didn’t want to move over to merchant service, he’d have plenty of time to go back to school and learn an entirely new profession, if he chose to.

  In the meantime, she reminded herself once again, why don’t you just go on concentrating on how lucky you and Taylor are to have Al around. I don’t know about Taylor, but I know I’ve learned an awful lot from him!

  “You heard?” she said, and both of them nodded in confirmation.

  “Al,” she continued to the sailing master, “I think this is going to be your job. I want you to pick yourself a set of watch-standers and an engineering crew ASAP.”

  “Mahalia’s going to raise hell if I pick the ones I really want, Ma’am,” O’Neal pointed out with a moustache-shadowed smile.

  “I’ll deal with Mahalia,” Honor told him with a lurking smile of her own, then jabbed an index finger under his nose. “But that’s not a hunting license for you to go down into Engineering and deliberately pick people you know are going to piss her off, understood?”

  “Aye, aye, Ma’am!” O’Neal’s smile turned into the sort of grin any urchin might have envied, and Nimitz bleeked the equivalent of a chuckle from his place on Honor’s shoulder as the sailing master’s gray eyes laughed at her.

  “I mean it, Al!” she said warningly, despite the telempathic treecat’s obvious amusement at whatever he was sensing from O’Neal. In fact, given Nimitz’s sense of humor, that amusement only made her even warier.

  “I know you do, Ma’am. And I’ll be good—promise.”

  Honor regarded him with a trace of lingering suspicion. Lieutenant Mahalia Rosenberg, Hawkwing’s engineering officer, was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and strong-nosed, with a thin, studious face. She was about Honor’s own age, and also, like Honor, from the planet Sphinx. In point of fact, she was from the city of Yawata Crossing, not that far from Honor’s birthplace in the Copper Wall Mountains, although she was one of the minority of the city’s citizens who weren’t even remotely related to the Harrington clan.