Echoes of Honor
Copyright © 1998
ISBN: 0671-57833-2
Publication October 1999
(hardcover)
(paperback)
by David Weber
Book Four
Chapter Twenty-Two
"Do you think well get the break this month?" Scotty
Tremaine
asked as he used a brightly colored bandana to mop irritably
at the sweat trickling down his face. He tried to keep any trace of anxiety out of his
voice, but his audience knew him too well to be fooled.
"Now how would I know that, Sir?" Horace Harkness asked in
reply, and his tone, while utterly respectful, managed to project so much patience that
Tremaine grinned despite himself.
"Sorry, Chief." He shoved the bandana into the hip pocket of
his trousersno longer StateSec issue, but produced, like the bandana, by Henri
Dessouix, who functioned as Camp Infernos chief tailorand shrugged.
"Its just that all the waiting around is getting to me. And when you add things
like this to the waiting . . . Well, lets just say my nerves arent what
they used to be."
"Mine either, Sir," the senior chief said absently, then
grunted in triumph as the jammed access panel hed been working on sprang open at
last. "Light, Sir?" he requested, and Tremaine directed the beam of his hand
lamp up into the shuttles number one communications bay.
"Hmmm . . ." Like Tremaine, Harkness now wore locally
produced clothing, and he obviously favored the same garish colors Dessouix did. In
fairness, Dessouix was limited in his choice of dyes by what grew within a reasonable
distance from Camp Inferno, but he did seem to enjoy mugging peoples optic nerves.
So did Harkness, apparently, and he looked more like an HD writers concept of a
pirate than a senior chief petty officer of Her Majestys Royal Manticoran
Navyespecially with the pulser and bush knife he insisted on carrying everywhere
with himas he frowned up into the small, electronics-packed compartment.
Peep installations tended to be bigger than Manticoran ones, largely
because they used more plug-in/pull-out components. Peep techs werent up to the sort
of in-place maintenance Manticoran technicians routinely performed, so the practice,
wherever possible, was to simply yank a malfunctioning component and send it to some
central servicing depot where properly trained people could deal with it. Unhappily for
the Peoples Navy, that assumed one had a replacement unit handy to plug into its
place when you pulled it, and that had been a major reason for the soaring Peep
unserviceability rates of the first two or three years of the war. The PN had been
structured around short, intensive campaigns with plenty of time to refit between gobbling
up each successive bite of someone elses real estate. Their logistics pipeline had
been designed to meet those needs, and it simply hadnt been up to hauling the
requisite number of replacement components back and forth between the front-line systems
and the rear area service and maintenance depots over an extended period of active
operations.
That, unfortunately, was one problem they seemed to be getting on top
of, Tremaine reflected while he watched Harkness pull out a test kit and begin checking
circuits. They were finally getting their logistics establishment up to something
approaching Allied standards, and
"Uh-oh." Harkness mutter pulled Tremaine out of his
thoughts and he peered up past the burly senior chiefs shoulders. "Looks like
weve got us a little problem in the transponder itself, Sir."
"How big a little problem?" Tremaine demanded
tersely.
"All I can tell you for certain right this minute is that it
aint working, Sir," Harkness replied. "I wont know more till we pull
it, but between you and me, it dont look real good. The problems in the
encryption module." He tapped the component in question and shrugged. "This
heres an almost solid cube of molycircs, and I didnt see no molecular
electronics shop aboard either of these two birds."
"Damn," Tremaine said softly. "I dont think Lady
Harrington is going to like this."
"Is the Chief sure, Scotty?" Honor Harrington asked that
evening. She and Alistair McKeon sat with Commodore Ramirez and Captain Benson in
Ramirez hut, and the insect equivalents of Hells ecology buzzed and whined as
they battered themselves with typical buggish obstinacy against the vegetable-oil lamps
hanging overhead.
"Im afraid so, Maam," Tremaine replied. "The
molycircs themselves are gone, and we dont have a replacement crypto component. He
and Chief Ascher are trying to cobble something up from the com gear, but therere
all kinds of system incompatibilities. Even if they manage to jury-rig a short-term fix,
it wont exactly be what Id call reliable." He shook his head.
"Sorry, Maam, but it looks like Shuttle Twos IFF beacon is down for
good."
"Damn," McKeon muttered. Honor glanced at him, then looked
back at Tremaine.
"Have he and Chief Barstow checked Number Ones beacon?"
"Yes, Maam. It seems to be fine," Tremaine said, very
carefully not stressing the verb or adding so far to his reply. Honor heard it
anyway, and the living side of her mouth quirked wryly.
"Well, go on back to them, please, and tell them I know
theyll do their best for us," she said.
"Yes, Maam." Tremaine saluted and turned to leave, and
she laughed.
"In the morning will be soon enough, Scotty! Dont go
wandering around the woods in the darkyou might get eaten by a bearcat!"
"Drop by my hut, Commander," Harriet Benson put in. After two
months of practice, most of Honors people could follow her slurred speech now
without too much difficulty. "Henri and Ill be glad to put you up tonight.
Besides, hes been thinking about that last move of yours," she went on when
Tremaine glanced at her. "He and Commander Caslet think theyve found a way to
get out of it after all."
Honor hid a small grimace at Bensons remark. None of the inmates
of Inferno ever attached the "Citizen" to the front of Warner Caslets rank
title. None of them were particularly comfortable about having a Peep naval officer in
their midst, but they werent as uncomfortable about it as Honor had feared
they would be, either. Apparently there were enough Legislaturalist ex-officers scattered
among Hells political prisoners for the regular POWs to have developed a
live-and-let-live attitude. Indeed, Honor suspected that their term for StateSec
personnel"Black Leg"had evolved as much as a way to differentiate
between the real enemy and Peeps who were fellow inmates as from the black trousers of the
SS uniform. Not that Infernos inhabitants intended to take any chances with Caslet.
Everyone had been quite polite to him, especially after Honors people had had a
chance to take them aside and explain how this particular Peep came to be on Hell, but
they kept an eye on him. And there was a specific reason hed been assigned to the
hut Benson and Dessouix shared.
"So theyre ganging up on me now, are they, Maam?"
Tremaine asked Benson with a grin, unaware of his COs thoughts. "Well,
theyre wrong. I bet I know what theyve thought up, and its still mate in
six!"
"Try not to hurt their feelings too badly, Scotty," Honor
advised. "I understand Lieutenant Dessouix is quite proficient at unarmed
combat." Which, of course, was one of the main reasons Caslet roomed with him.
"Ha! If he doesnt want his feelings hurt, he shouldnt
have whupped up on me like that in the first two games, Maam!" Tremaine
retorted with a twinkle, then saluted his superiors and disappeared into the night.
"An entertaining young fellow," Ramirez noted in his deep,
rumbling voice, and Nimitz bleeked in amused agreement from his place on the hand-hewn
plank table. Benson reached out and rubbed him between the ears, and he pressed back
against her touch with a buzzing purr.
"He is that," Honor agreed, watching Benson pet Nimitz.
The cat had set about captivating Camp Infernos inmates
with all his customary skill, and he had every one of them wrapped around his thumb by
now. Not that he hadnt had more reasons than usual for being his charming self. The
seduction process had given himand Honorthe opportunity to sample the emotions
of every human being in the camp. A few of them were hanging on the ragged edge, with a
dangerous degree of instability after their endless, hopeless years on Hell, and she had
quietly discussed her concerns about those people with Ramirez and Benson, but only one of
Infernos six hundred and twelve inhabitants had been a genuine security risk.
Honor had been dumbfounded to discover that the Peeps really had
planted an agent in Inferno, and the other inmates had been even more shocked than she.
The man in question had been their resident expert on how to spin and weave the local
equivalent of flax to provide the fabric Dessouix and his two assistants used to clothe
the inmates. That had made him a vital cog in the camps small, survival-oriented
economy, and almost all of the other prisoners had regarded him as a personal friend, as
well. The thought that he was actually a StateSec agent planted to betray their trust had
been more than enough to produce a murderous fury in his fellow prisoners.
Only he hadnt actually been an "agent" at all; he was
simply an informer. It was a subtle difference, but it had kept Ramirez from ordering (or
allowing) his execution when, acting on Honors suggestion, Benson and Dessouix found
the short-range com set hidden in his mattress. Had they failed to find it before the next
food drop brought a shuttle into his com range, a single short report from him would have
killed them all, and they knew it. But theyd also discovered why hed become a
StateSec agent, and it was hard to fault a man for agreeing to do anything which
might save his lover from execution.
So instead of killing him, theyd simply taken away his com set
and detailed half a dozen others to keep an eye on him. All things taken together, Honor
was just as glad it had worked out that way. Whatever else he might have been, too many of
the camp inmates had considered him a friend for too many years, and things were going to
be ugly enough without having to begin killing their own.
"on Basilisk Station?"
She blinked and looked up as she realized McKeon had been speaking to
her.
"Sorry, Alistair. I was thinking about something else," she
apologized. "What did you say?"
"I asked if you remembered what a puppy Scotty was at
Basilisk," McKeon said, then grinned at Ramirez and Benson. "He meant well, but lord
was he green!"
"And he was alsowhat? A couple of hundred thousand richer by
the end of the deployment?" Honor shot back with a half-grin of her own.
"At least," McKeon agreed. "He had a real nose for
spotting contraband," he explained to the other two. "Made him very popular with
his crewmates when the Admiralty started handing out the prize money."
"I imagine it would!" Benson laughed.
"But hes a levelheaded young man, too," Honor said, and
her grin faded as she remembered a time that "levelheaded young man" had saved
her career.
"I can believe that, too," Benson said. She glanced at Honor
as if shed caught a hint of what had been left unspoken, but she chose not to push
for more. Instead, she shook herself, and her expression became much more serious.
"How badly is this likely to affect our plans?"
"If nothing happens to Shuttle Ones beacon, it wont
affect them at all," Honor replied. She held out her hand to Nimitz, and the
cat rose and limped over to her. She lifted him down into her lap and leaned back,
holding him to her chest while her good eye met the gazes of her three senior
subordinates. "We were always going to have to task one of the shuttles to deal with
the courier boat," she reminded them, "and an IFF beacon wont matter one
way or the other for that part of the operation."
"And if something does happen to Shuttle Ones beacon?"
McKeon asked quietly.
"In that case, we either figure out how to take a supply shuttle
intact, or else we abandon Lunch Basket entirely and go for a more direct approach,"
Honor replied, equally quietly, and the living side of her face was grim.
None of her listeners cared for that, yet none of them disagreed,
either. For all its complexity, "Operation Lunch Basket," as Honor had decided
to christen her ops plan, offered their best chance of success, and they all knew it. In
fact, it was probably their only real chance. Trying any of the fallback plans was
far more likely to get them killed than get them off Hell, but no one mentioned that
either. After all, getting themselves killed trying was better than staying on Hell.
"In that case," McKeon said after a moment, "I guess
wed better just concentrate on not having anything happen to Ones
beacon." His tone was so droll Honor chuckled almost despite herself and shook her
head at him.
"Id say that sounds like a reasonable thing to do," she
agreed. "Of course, exactly how we do it is an interesting question."
"Shoot, Honorthats simple!" McKeon told
her with a grin. "We just sick Fritz on it. Hell set up one of his famous
preventive care programs, prescribe a little exercise, schedule it for regular office
visits, and well be home free!"
This time Ramirez and Benson joined Honors laughter. Fritz
Montoya had already proved worth his weight in anything anyone would have cared to name to
Camp Inferno. Relatively few medical officers got sent to Hell, and of those who had been
sent there, none had been further exiled to Inferno. For the most part, the local germs
tended to leave the indigestible human interlopers alone, but there were a few indigenous
diseases which were as stubbornly persistent in attacking them as shuttlesquitos or
bearcats. And, of course, there was always the potential for food poisoning, accidents, or
some purely terrestrial bug to wreak havoc. More than one of Hells camps had been
completely depopulated between supply runs, and Montoya had found himself with a backlog
of minor complaints and injuries to deal with.
His facilities were nonexistent, and his medical supplies were limited
to the emergency supplies aboard the shuttles, but he was very good at his job. Although
hed been reduced almost to the primitive capabilities of a late prespace physician
on Old Earth, hed handled everything that came his way with aplomb. But hed
also almost had a fit over some of Camp Infernos routine procedures. Hed
completely overhauled their garbage disposal practices, for example, and hed
instigated an inflexible schedule of regular checkups. Hed even rooted out the most
sedentary of the camps inhabitants and badgered Benson into reworking the work
assignments to see to it that they got sufficient exercise. For the most part, the
camps inhabitants were still at the bemused stage where he was concerned, as if they
hadnt quite decided what to make of this alien bundle of energy, but they were far
too glad to see him to resent him.
Honor hid a fresh mental grimace at the thought. That was another thing
the Peeps couldnt have cared less about. The way StateSec saw it, it was cheaper for
them to lose an entire camp of two or three thousand prisoners than to bother to provide
proper medical care. If someone got sick or injured, he or she lived or died on his or her
own, with only the crude facilities and resources fellow prisoners might be able to cobble
up to keep them alive.
I suppose I should be grateful they even bother to lace the
inmates rations with contraceptives, she thought grimly. Not that they do it
to be nice. Kids would just be more mouths for them to feed, after all. And God only knows
what the infant mortality rate would look like in a place like this without proper medical
support!
"Im sure Fritz would be touched by your faith in his medical
prowess," she told McKeon dryly, shaking off her gloomy thoughts.
"Unfortunately, I doubt even his superb bedside manner would impress molycircs very
much."
"I dont know about that," McKeon argued with a grin.
"Every time he starts in on me about exercise and diet, I get instantly
healthy in self-defense!"
"But youre easily led and highly suggestible,
Alistair," Honor said sweetly, and he laughed.
"You are feeling sleepy, very sleepy," she intoned
sonorously, wiggling the fingers of her hand in front of his eyes. "Your eyelids are
growing heavier and heavier."
"They are not," he repliedthen blinked suddenly and
stretched in a prodigious yawn. Honor laughed delightedly, echoed by Nimitzs bleek
of amusement, and McKeon gave both of them an injured look as he finished stretching.
"I, Dame Honor, am neither suggestible nor easily led," he
told her severely. "Claims to that effect are base lies, Ill have you and your
friend know! However" he yawned again "Ive been up all day and
so, purely coincidentally, I do find myself just a bit sleepy at the moment. The which
being so, I think I should take myself off to bed. Ill see you all in the
morning."
"Good night, Alistair," she said, and smiled as he sketched a
salute and disappeared into the night with a chuckle.
"You two are really close, arent you?" Benson observed
quietly after McKeon had vanished. Honor raised an eyebrow at her, and the blond captain
shrugged. "Not like me and Henri, I know. But the way you look out for each
other"
"We go back a long way," Honor replied with another of her
half-smiles, and bent to rest her chin companionably on the top of Nimitzs head.
"I guess its sort of a habit to watch out for each other by now, but Alistair
seems to get stuck with more of that than I do, bless him."
"I know. Henri and I made the hike back to your shuttles with you,
remember?" Benson said dryly. "I was impressed by the comprehensiveness of his
vocabulary. I dont think he repeated himself more than twice."
"He probably wouldnt have been so mad if I hadnt snuck
off without mentioning it to him," Honor said, and her right cheek dimpled while her
good eye gleamed in memory. "Of course, he wouldnt have let me leave him behind
if I had mentioned it to him, either. Sometimes I think he just doesnt
understand the chain of command at all!"
"Ha!" Ramirez laugh rumbled around the hut like rolling
thunder. "From what Ive seen of you so far, thats a case of the pot
calling the kettle black, Dame Honor!"
"Nonsense. I always respect the chain of command!" Honor
protested with a chuckle.
"Indeed?" It was Bensons turn to shake her head.
"Ive heard about your antics atHancock Station, was it called?" She
laughed out loud at Honors startled expression. "Your people are proud of you,
Honor. They like to talk, and to be honest, Henri and I encouraged them to. We needed to
get a feel for you, if we were going to trust you with our lives." She shrugged.
"It didnt take us long to make our minds up once they started opening up with
us."
Honor felt her face heat and looked down at Nimitz, rolling him gently
over on his back to stroke his belly fur. She concentrated on that with great intensity
for the next several seconds, then looked back up once her blush had cooled.
"You dont want to believe everything you hear," she
said with commendable composure. "Sometimes people exaggerate a bit."
"No doubt," Ramirez agreed, tacitly letting her off the hook,
and she gave him a grateful half-smile.
"In the meantime, though," Benson said, accepting the change
of subject, "the loss of the shuttle beacon does make me more anxious about Lunch
Basket."
"Me, too," Honor admitted. "It cuts our operational
safety margin in half, and we still dont know when well finally get a chance
to try it." She grimaced. "They really arent cooperating very well, are
they?"
"Im sure its only because they dont know what
were planning," Ramirez told her wryly. "Theyre much too courteous
to be this difficult if they had any idea how inconvenient for us it is."
"Right. Sure!" Honor snorted, and all three of them chuckled.
Yet there was an undeniable edge of worry behind the humor, and she leaned back in her
chair, stroking Nimitz rhythmically, while she thought.
The key to her plan was the combination of the food supply runs from
Styx and the Peeps lousy communications security. Her analysts had been right about
the schedule on which the Peeps operated; they made a whole clutch of supply runs in a
relatively short periodusually about three daysonce per month. Given Camp
Infernos "punishment" status, it was usually one of the last camps to be
visited, which was another factor in Honors plan.
Between runs, the Black Legs stayed put on Styx, amusing themselves and
leaving the prisoner population to its own devices, and despite the guard forces
obvious laziness, she reflected, it really was an effective prison system. No doubt the
absolute cost of the operation was impressive, but on a per-prisoner basis, it must be
ludicrously low. All the Peeps did when they needed another camp was to pick a spot and
dump the appropriate number of inmates on it, along with some unpowered hand tools and a
minimal amount of building material. Their total investment was a couple of dozen each of
axes, hammers, hand saws, picks, and shovels, enough wire to put up a perimeter against
the local predators, a few kilos of nails, andif they were feeling particularly
generoussome extruded plastic panels with which to roof the inmates huts. If a
few hut-builders got munched on by the neighborhoods wildlife before they got their
camp built, well, that was no skin off the Peeps noses. There were always plenty
more prisoners where theyd come from.
StateSec didnt even carry the expense of shipping in and issuing
the sort of preserved emergency rations she and her people had been living on. They grew
fresh food on Styx, which, unlike any of the rest of Hell, had been thoroughly terraformed
when the original prison was built. To be more precise, their automated farming equipment
and a handful of "trustees" did all the grunt work to raise the crops, and the
Peeps simply distributed it.
Shed been surprised by that at first, but on second thought it
had made a lot of sense. Fresh food was much bulkier, which made for more work on the
distribution end of the system, but it didnt keep indefinitely the way e-rats did.
That meant it would have been much harder for one of the camps to put itself on short
rations and gradually build up a stash of provisions that might let its inmates get into
some sort of mischief the garrison would not have approved of. And it made logistical
sense, too. By growing their own food here on Hell, the Peeps could drastically reduce the
number of supply runs they had to make to the planet. In fact, it looked like they only
made one major supply delivery or so a year, now.
But there was more traffic to and from the Cerberus System, albeit on
an extremely erratic schedule, than shed assumed would be the case. For one thing,
runs to deliver new prisoners had gone up dramatically after the Committee of Public
Safety took over. One of the old Office of Internal Securitys failings had been that
it hadnt been repressive enough. A regime which relied on the iron fist to
stay in power was asking for trouble if it relaxed its grip by even a millimeter, and the
Legislaturalist leadership had made the mistake of clamping down hard enough to enrage its
enemies, but not hard enough to eliminate them outright or terrify them into impotence.
Worse, theyd ordered occasional amnesties under which political prisoners were
released to placate the Mob, which put people whod experienced InSecs
brutality from the inside back outside to tell their tales of mistreatmenta
heaven-sent propaganda opportunity for the agitators of the Citizens Rights Union and
other dissident groups. Worse, perhaps, it had suggested a sense of weakness on
InSecs part, for why would they have attempted to placate their enemies if
theyd felt they were in a position of strength?
The Committee of Public Safety, having been the recipient of such
assistance from its predecessors, had decided that it would err by going to the
opposite extreme. Its determination not to extend the same encouragement to its own
enemies went a long way towards explaining the brutal thoroughness which had made Oscar
Saint-Justs security forces so widely and virulently hated.
It also explained why the Peeps were dumping even more prisoners on
Hell these days. It served them simultaneously as a place to put potential troublemakers
safely out of the way and a not-so-veiled threat to keep other troublemakers in line back
home. And it was also much thriftier than simply shooting everyone who got out of line.
Not that they were shy about summary executions, but the problem with shooting people was
that executions were fairly permanent . . . and deprived the state of any potential
usefulness the troublemakers might have offered down the road. If you just stuck them on
Hell and left them there, you could always retrieve them later if it turned out you needed
them for something worthwhile.
In point of fact, StateSec seemed to regard Hell, and especially its
political prisoners, as a sort of piggy bank for conscripted labor forces. Even the most
modern of industrial bases (which the PRHs was not) had its share of jobs which
ranged from the unpleasant to the acutely dangerous. More than that, StateSec had its own
highly secret projects, which it preferred to keep as quiet as possible, and there were
people among Hells politicals who had skills those projects sometimes needed badly.
For that matter, before the war with the Star Kingdom broke out, StateSecs
predecessors in the Office of Internal Security had used Hell as a source of
"colonists" (or at least construction crews) for some less than idyllic worlds
where the Peoples Navy needed basing facilities and then returned the workers to
Hell when the job was done.
All of which meant that StateSec-crewed personnel transports arrived at
Hell, invariably with a warship escort these days, at highly unpredictable but fairly
frequent intervals. More rarely, one of StateSecs warships which found itself in the
area or passing nearby on its own business might drop by for fresh food, to pick up
reactor mass from the huge tank farm StateSec maintained in orbit around Hell, or for a
little planetside R&R.
One might not normally think of a "prison planet" as a place
where people would want to take liberty, but Camp Charon was actually quite luxurious
(InSec had chosen to pamper the personnel who found themselves stuck out here, and
StateSec had seen no reason to change that policy), and Styxs climate would have
stood comparison with that of any resort world. Which made sense, Honor supposed. It was
only reasonable to put your permanent base in the most pleasant spot you could find, and
with an entire planet to choose from, you ought to be able to find at least a few spots
that were very pleasant indeed.
Besides, she thought grimly, this is StateSecs planet.
They own it, lock, stock, and barrel, and they feel safe here. I dont think
ONIs ever realized just how important that is to them. It may be off the beaten
track, and months may go by with no one at all dropping by, but they always know Hell is
out here, like some sort of refuge. Or like some nasty little adolescent gangs
"clubhouse."
She snorted at the thought and brushed it aside. It probably had all
kinds of psychological significance, but at the moment it was definitely secondary to the
problem they faced.
And solving the problem they faced required certain preconditions. Like
a Peep supply run to Inferno which happened to arrive when no other supply shuttle had a
direct line of transmission to the camp. And which wasnt on the com when it arrived
but had been on the com at some point prior to its arrival.
So far, theyd been through three complete supply cycles without
meeting the conditions they needed, and Honor was honest enough to admit that the strain
of waiting was getting to her. At least the rations the Peeps were delivering were
sufficient to feed all her people as well as Infernos "legal" population.
The garrison wasnt very careful about counting noses except for the twice-a-T-year
prison census, and a dozen or so of Infernos inmates had died of natural causes
since the last headcount, so there was ample food to go around.
Actually, the Peeps were fairly generous in their food allocations . .
. when they werent cutting rations in punishment, at least. Probably because it
didnt cost them anything to feed their prisoners a diet which would actually keep
them healthy. Honor was almost back up to her proper weight now, and her hair had changed
from a short fuzz to a curly, close-growing cap. There was nothing Fritz Montoya could do
about her missing arm, blind eye, or dead nerves, and shed found that the lost arm,
in particular, made it very difficult for her to pursue her normal exercise regime. But
Montoya was insufferably pleased with the results of the rest of his ministrations, and
she had to admit he had cause to be.
She gave herself a mental shake as she recognized the signs. Her
thoughts were beginning to wander again, which meant Alistair wasnt the only person
whod stayed up too late.
She stood, holding Nimitz in the crook of her arm, and smiled at the
other two.
"Well, whatever happens, we cant do a thing until the next
food run. In the meantime, I think I need some sleep. Ill see you both at
breakfast."
"Of course," Ramirez replied. He and Benson both rose, and
Honor nodded to them.
"Good night, then," she said and stepped out the door into
the bug-whining night.
Copyright © 1998 by David Weber
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