In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (21 page)

Charles wanted to snap out a curse, to remind Weiss about the horrible death screaming toward them. But it was too late for that. It was too late for anything. Clenching his hands into impotent fists, he waited for death. Abruptly, incomprehensibly, the stars in the main display vanished, and the insane thought flashed through Charles’s mind that without even a flash of vaporized bulkheads he had somehow been killed.

And then, with a surreal silence, utterly divorced from the noise and the fury he had expected, the mines simply…disappeared from the tactical display.

An eerie stillness descended on the bridge. Charles stared at the tactical, fighting against his frozen mind, trying desperately to figure out what had happened. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Weiss watching him in grimly amused expectation.

And then, finally, he got it.

He turned to Weiss. “Very nice,” he said quietly. “The LAC, right?”

Weiss nodded. “Standard Andermani military minefield doctrine,” he said. “You wait for the mines to activate and lock on, kill your forward acceleration and go ballistic, then turn your escorts over to put their wedges between your throat and kilt and the mines.” He smiled tightly. “A doctrine partially developed by Admiral Herzog von Rabenstrange himself.”

“With a bit of inspiration from Hancock Station,” Rabenstrange added. He had swiveled around, Charles noted, and his eyes were squarely on him. “Do we have an ID on that cruiser yet?”

“Yes, sir, he’s finally started broadcasting,” someone called. “It’s the RMN
Charger,
Captain William Grantley commanding. Intelligence data shows no current location or assignment for either ship or commander.”

“We’ve reached extreme missile range,” another voice put in. “Firing solution plotted and laid in.”

“Acknowledged,” Rabenstrange said. “Well,
Herr
Navarre. It appears your gut was right.”

“So it would seem,” Charles said, forcing as much calmness as he could manage into his voice. It wasn’t a lot. Distantly, he wondered how Mercier was reacting to the situation, but didn’t dare look at the Peep to find out. “Well executed, My Lord. What now?”

Rabenstrange swiveled back around again. “They’ve had their shot,” he said quietly. “Now it’s our turn.”
 

*
   
*
   
*

“No!” Tyler screamed at the bridge crew, at the
Derfflinger
’s intact image on the screen in front of him, at the universe at large. “No, no,
no!
”

The attack couldn’t have failed. It
couldn’t.
The setup had been perfect, the
Derfflinger
’s insertion vector had been perfect, the mines’ operation had been perfect. It simply wasn’t possible for Rabenstrange to have come up with that blocking maneuver so fast, let alone have executed it.

He felt his lips pull back in a snarl. Of course. Navarre. Tyler had no idea how the slimy little Solly had pulled this off, but he knew beyond a stealthed doubt that Navarre was behind it somehow.

He drew himself up in his command chair. “Stand by to transmit,” he bit out. So Navarre had ruined his chance to destroy the
Derfflinger
and strike a solid blow for the oppressed Andermani people. Fine. He would just have to let the Manties do it for him.

“Transmission ready,” the com officer called.

“Make sure it’s a wide focus,” Tyler reminded him. Navarre had insisted on that, to the point of underlining the order. The Imperials needed to see a Manty bridge, hear Manty-style orders, and see a whole group of up-to-date Manty uniforms. Only then would they truly be convinced that the Manties were the ones responsible for the attack.

“Wide focus, aye,” the response came.

Tyler smiled again. Royalists against Imperials…and when it was over, the People’s Republic would be there to gather together the pieces and bring freedom to the oppressed of both nations. Tyler’s only regret was that he wouldn’t be there to see it.

He let his smile fade, and set his face in a dark, Royalist glare, and touched the switch. “This is Captain William Grantley of the RMN
Charger,
” he announced. “IAN
Derfflinger,
you are trespassing on territory claimed by the Star Kingdom of Manticore. Leave at once, or face the consequences.”

*
   
*
   
*

“…or face the consequences.”

Weiss stared at the com display, his stomach a single hard knot of horror and disbelief, his brain battling to make sense of what his ears and mind were telling him.

But he couldn’t do it. Even after the evidence of Mischa’s Star, even after the casual violation of Imperial territory and property that that attack had demonstrated, this sudden ultimatum was more than his mind could wrap itself around.

Because he
knew
the Manties. He’d met many of them, soldiers and politicians both, in the days before the war. He’d spoken with them, dined with them, interacted socially with them. Some were geniuses, some were merely competent, and others were fools who clearly owed their positions to family name and political influence.

But never had he sensed from any of them the sort of arrogant galactic-level supremacy or false-smile, hidden-dagger scheming that he’d felt from so many of Haven’s politicians. The Star Kingdom was proud, certainly, and all too often that pride swerved across the line into annoying cockiness.

But cockiness was one thing. A deliberate invasion, a deliberate act of war, was something else entirely.

But he couldn’t ignore the evidence of his own eyes. It was all right there, staring him in the face. He’d been aboard a number of Manty warships, though the Manties themselves probably weren’t aware of that, and the bridge stretching around and behind Captain Grantley was without a doubt that of a
Star Knight
-class heavy cruiser.

“RMN
Charger,
you have violated Imperial Andermani territory,” Rabenstrange was saying, the admiral’s voice faint through the hissing of blood in Weiss’s ears. “It is
you
who will strike your wedge and surrender your ship and crew.”

“I think not, Admiral,” Grantley said. “You can destroy me if you choose, but that won’t change the facts of this situation.”

“And those facts are…?” Rabenstrange asked.

Weiss frowned, tearing his eyes from Grantley’s image and looking at Rabenstrange. There had been something odd in the admiral’s voice just then.

He frowned harder. Because it wasn’t just Rabenstrange’s voice. The admiral’s face was still grim, but to Weiss’s amazement he could the hint of a smile twitching at the corners of the other’s lips.

Weiss had known men like that, men who went into battles with smiles of anticipation, especially battles that promised to be unmitigated slaughters. But Rabenstrange wasn’t like that. He was a servant of the Crown, going into battle when he had to, or was ordered to, and never simply because he enjoyed it.

Or did he? What did Weiss really know about his patron, anyway?

“The fact that the Star Kingdom hereby lays claim to this system and everything within it,” Grantley said evenly. “We now have vested interests here, interests that we
will
defend.”

“With your fleet fully engaged against the People’s Republic of Haven?” Rabenstrange countered. “Surely your leaders aren’t foolish enough to take actions that would open up a second front.”

Grantley smiled, a thin, evil thing. “Your intelligence services are slipping, Admiral,” he said. “We have new weapons and delivery systems which will end the war with the Peeps within three months at the latest.” The smile vanished. “And when we’ve finished with them, you’d better pray that the Star Kingdom hasn’t found someone else who needs to be taught a lesson about the galaxy’s new realities.”

“Is that a threat?” Rabenstrange asked softly.

“Take it as a threat, a warning, or a simple statement of fact,” Grantley said. “But take it seriously.”

“Oh, I will,” Rabenstrange promised. “As seriously as the new reality demands.”

He turned to Weiss. “Well,
Herr
Weiss?” he asked quietly, his voice as calm and cool as if he was asking which wine the attaché wanted with dinner. “Do you see it?”

Weiss stared at him.
Do you see it?
What kind of insane question was that? “I’m sorry, My Lord?” he managed.

“The larger picture, Lyang,” Rabenstrange said, lowering his voice even more. “Ignore Captain Grantley. Take in the larger picture.”

Weiss looked back at the screen, as bewildered as he’d ever been in his life. Grantley hadn’t moved, his defiant glare still blazing from the screen like the laser head of one of his own mines. Behind him, the bridge was still a
Star Knight
-class bridge, and the people sitting or standing at their consoles were still clothed in the proper Manty uniforms….

And then, Weiss saw it.

Or rather, he saw
her.

She was standing at one of the fire-coordination consoles at the rear of the bridge, just over Grantley’s left shoulder, her expression as grim and defiant as the captain’s own. Her lips were moving as if she was speaking, though her voice from that distance would of course be inaudible on Grantley’s pickup.

Only she shouldn’t be here. She
couldn’t
be here.

He looked back at Rabenstrange. The admiral was smiling openly now, a smile like the approach of death itself. “I see it, My Lord,” Weiss said.

“Excellent.” Rabenstrange nodded his head fractionally to the side, then swiveled his chair to look behind him.

Weiss turned. Over the past couple of minutes Charles had drifted back to the rear of the bridge and was now standing beside Mercier, the two of them flanked by a pair of
Totenkopfs
. “Tell me,
Herr
Navarre;
Herr
Mercier,” Rabenstrange called, loudly enough for the entire bridge to hear as he gestured toward the screen. “Which one of you knew I’d personally met the Duchess Honor Harrington?”

A violent twitch jerked at Mercier’s body, his head twisting sharply as he looked at the screen.

His eyes widening as he belatedly caught sight of Harrington’s impossible presence behind Captain Grantley’s defiant scowl.

Rabenstrange lifted a finger. “Take him,” he ordered.

Mercier must have known in that instant that he was a dead man. But he was clearly not the sort to simply roll over and accept his fate. Spinning half around, he threw himself like a striking rattlesnake at the nearest of the Marines, one hand jabbing toward the other’s eyes, the other making a grab for the guard’s holstered pulser.

But these weren’t ordinary Marines, or even ordinary Andermani Marines. The
Totenkopf
dropped smoothly into a crouch, letting Mercier’s jabbing fingers shoot harmlessly over his head, simultaneously dropping his hand to his holster in an attempt to catch his attacker’s hand and pin it there. Mercier snatched his hand back just in time, leaning away and shifting the direction of his lunge toward a row of engineering monitor consoles and a pair of crewwomen goggling at him from behind them.

He was four steps from his potential hostages when a precisely-aimed burst of pulser darts shattered his body into a spray of blood and raw meat.

Someone swore feelingly. “Enough of that,” Rabenstrange said coolly. “Lieutenant Ling, call the medic bay and have them remove the body for examination.” He cocked his head. “Now, as to you,
Herr
Navarre.”

Weiss dragged his eyes away from what was left of Mercier and looked back at Charles. The Solly was standing exactly where he had been, except that now he was bowed slightly over at the waist with two
Totenkopfs
pinning his arms behind his back. “Nicely done, My Lord,” Charles said, his voice as calm and cool as Rabenstrange’s. “May I ask a favor before I’m taken to the brig?”

Weiss looked at Rabenstrange, wincing at the implied arrogance of that request from an enemy prisoner to his captor. But the admiral merely raised an eyebrow. “Ask it quickly.”

“After you deal with Citizen Captain Tyler and his captured Manty cruiser, I’d ask that you have your medics give me a complete examination,” Charles said. “The late Citizen Colonel Mercier implanted me with some kind of poison drip, the antidote to which is probably now well mixed with his own bodily fluids. You have approximately six hours in which to either find and remove the drip, or else synthesize more of the antidote.”

“And if we don’t?” Rabenstrange asked.

Charles gave the admiral a lopsided smile. “If you don’t, you’ll never know exactly what happened here today.”

“
Herr
Herzog, the enemy ship has launched missiles,” the sensor officer announced.

“Point defense on alert; stand by a response,” Rabenstrange said. “Take the prisoner to sickbay.” He swiveled back around. “And,” he added over his shoulder, “get that mess off my bridge.”

*
   
*
   
*

The first thing Charles noticed when he awoke was a glass jar sitting on the tray beside his sickbay bed. Inside the jar was a small, spiny insectoid creature about the size of a tick.

The second thing he noticed was that his wrists and ankles were anchored securely to his bed’s rails. Clearly, the Andermani weren’t taking any chances with him.

Under the circumstances, Charles could hardly blame them.

He had seen a corpsman twice, and the doctor once, and had been fed a small, disappointingly bland meal when Rabenstrange finally made the appearance Charles had been expecting. “You’re looking well,” the admiral commented, giving Charles’s restraints a quick but careful look before pulling a chair to the foot of the bed and sitting down.

Not that Charles would have tried anything, even if he’d been so inclined. Not with a pair of silent
Totenkopfs
taking up positions at Rabenstrange’s shoulders. “I’m feeling well, too, My Lord, thank you,” he said. “Given the time that’s passed since our last conversation, and the obvious fact that I’m still alive, I gather your medics were successful.”

“The evidence is right there,” Rabenstrange said, nodding toward the jar. “The poison drip was actually nothing more than a parasite, probably genetically altered, that your friends introduced into your alimentary canal. It had lodged in a fold in your small intestine, where it could feed happily away as it secreted its poison into your system.”