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HMS Prince Adrian

HMSS Hephaestus

Manticore Planetary orbit

Manticore Binary System

March 22, 1906 PD


lieutenant Scotty Tremaine peered at the diagnostic readout on his handheld. He couldn’t quite make out the tiny letters, and he blinked his eyes, trying to make them focus. They refused, and his mouth tightened angrily. He glared at the display, then hurled it back into the open toolbox at his elbow.

It hit with a clatter, and the youthful lieutenant clenched his fists for a moment, then scrubbed angrily at his eyes. He drew a deep breath, held it for a long, slow moment. Then he exhaled, and his shoulders slumped.

“Sorry about that, Horace,” he said.

“Nothing to be sorry about, Sir,” the powerfully built senior chief with the battered prizefighter’s face replied, and Tremaine snorted harshly.

“Don’t think Commander Yaytsev will be real happy if we go around breaking the equipment, though,” he said.

“The Commander’s not that kinda hardcase, Sir,” Harkness said. “Runs a tight department, but he’s not gonna chew your ass over a dropped handheld.”

“I didn’t drop it,” Tremaine pointed out, and Harkness shrugged.

“Nope. But there’s a lot of that going around,” he said.

“Yeah.” The single word came out in a gusty sigh, and Tremaine nodded heavily. “Yeah, I guess there is.”

He drew another deep breath and leaned a shoulder against the bulkhead of the pinnace’s electronics compartment while he ran one hand over his hair. He knew Harkness knew exactly why he’d had trouble reading the diagnostic, and he didn’t really care. He and the senior chief had been through too much together to worry about trying to hide their emotions, especially when it was just the two of them. And they weren’t the only people aboard Prince Adrian who were feeling those emotions just now.

Although it must be immeasurably worse aboard Nike, he thought. Among Captain Harrington’s current crew, who’d watched the love growing between her and Paul Tankersley. Who knew that eventually the Captain would return to them and they would have to face her.

It wasn’t their fault, any more than it was Tremaine’s or Harkness’. And not one of them would feel they hadn’t somehow failed her by not preventing it. It was illogical. It was unreasonable—even stupid—but all of them felt it.

“I talked to Gunny Babcock about it,” Harkness said, and despite his lingering grief, Tremaine smiled ever so slightly.

Horace Harkness’ relationship with Marines in general was a hate-hate affair. True, it had been quite some time since he’d faced a captain’s mast for knocking the stuffing out of a Marine. But the list of bars he and various Marines had reduced to wreckage was legendary, and he and Sergeant Major Iris Babcock—“Gunny” Babcock, since that was the unofficial, and hence hallowed, title bestowed upon any warship’s senior Marine noncom, regardless of his or her official rank—had a rather . . . fraught relationship. It was less strained than it might have been, since they’d served together under Captain Harrington in Yeltsin and both of them—like Tremaine himself—had been involved in the liberation of Blackbird Base and the surviving Manticoran POWs. Unfortunately, “less strained than it might have been” still left considerable room for improvement.

“And what did the Gunny have to say?” Tremaine asked, after a moment.

“She hates the son of a bitch.” Harkness’ voice was suddenly harsh, almost as cold as his eyes. “This isn’t the first time the miserable piece of shit’s killed somebody she cared about. Hell, I think the way she saw it coming only makes it worse for her! And the Colonel—!”

The senior chief clamped his jaw, and Tremaine nodded heavily.

He knew Colonel Ramirez almost as well as he knew Captain Harrington. Ramirez was a man of iron, everyone knew that. “And now with Paul, you’ve got proof it is,” McKeon said bitterly. And Tremaine knew exactly how the bitterness of Ramirez’s grief, his sense of failure, fanned the white heat of his rage. It wasn’t his fault any more than it was anyone else’s, but he’d been Tankersley’s second. He’d been there on the field.

And he was the one who’d have to face the Captain and tell her how it had happened.

“I actually sat down with her over a beer,” Harkness said in a voice that was much closer to normal, and Tremaine blinked.

“You had a beer with Gunny Babcock?” he repeated carefully.

“Well, yeah.” Harkness looked a little embarrassed, but he met Tremaine’s eyes steadily. “Seemed like the thing to do. And, for a Marine, I guess she’s not that bad. For a Marine, of course.”

“Oh, of course!” Tremaine nodded, careful about his expression, and grateful for the brief sparkle of amusement Harkness’ semi-belligerent, defensive expression sent through him.

“Anyway,” the senior chief went on, “thing is, I think she had to vent, and she couldn’t do it with the other jarheads, so she had to settle for me.” He shrugged. “Wasn’t easy for her to open up even with me, really. Took a while. But she had a lot to say about Summervale, once I got her talking. More’n I expected, really.” He shook his head, his face forgetting its duty to express disdain for all Marines. “She’s hurting even worse than most of us, Sir. She actually . . .” He shook his head and half-glared at Tremaine. “I think she was right on the edge of crying, Sir.”

His expression dared Tremaine to make anything of that, but the lieutenant only nodded. Harkness looked back at him for a moment, then shrugged.

“It’s like she’s seen this whole HD before, Sir. And she knows the bastard will just go right on doing this shit. It’s what he does.” He glared down into the toolbox, his eyes fiery. “It’s like some kind of goddammed curse, Sir. It just keeps happening to the Captain! And there’s not one fucking thing any of us—any of us—can do for her! Not this time.”

Tremaine blinked again, this time on the same tears which had clouded the diagnostic. He reached out and squeezed Harkness’ burly shoulder.

“I know, Chief,” he said. “I know.”

The surprising thing, he thought bitterly, was that Tankersley had actually hit Summervale. It had been only a shoulder wound, little more than a graze, but he was certain Summervale hadn’t expected it. Not from a totally inexperienced opponent fighting his very first duel against a seasoned veteran of over a dozen encounters on “the field of honor.”

Captain Tankersley had been completely outclassed in everything except courage and determination, but he’d actually gotten his shot off first, and it if had only been better placed . . . 

Only it hadn’t been. No doubt Summervale had been astonished that he’d been hit at all, but whatever else he might be, he was as cold and methodical as they came. He hadn’t rushed his own shot, hadn’t taken a chance on merely wounding his opponent. That wasn’t the result Denver Summervale had been hired to assure, and the paid duelist—the paid assassin—had taken his time, ignored his own wound . . . and shot Paul Tankersley squarely in the head.

He hadn’t even pretended he felt anything remotely like remorse, either. He’d only stood there, pistol still in his hand, looking down at Tankersley with a lip that was ever so slightly curled, while Livitnikov and the attending physician ripped his sleeve open to get at his own trivial wound.

And then he’d handed his weapon to Livitnikov with a haughty gaze, climbed into an air limo which had materialized out of nowhere, and simply disappeared.

“I’ll kill him, Sir,” Harkness snarled, scrubbing at tears of his own. “I’ll kill the sorry-assed SOB with my own two hands. His fucking ‘code of honor’ won’t help him when I catch him in a goddammed alley somewhere! Hell, the Gunny’ll help me do it, and nobody’ll ever find the body!”

“I didn’t hear that.” Tremaine’s tone was just sharp enough to make Harkness look at him.

“I didn’t hear that,” Tremaine repeated, then. “And I’d better not hear about you and the Gunny deciding to go drinking dirtside together. It wouldn’t break my heart if something fatal were to happen to Mister Summervale, but making it happen—much as I might approve of it—wouldn’t be worth what it cost the two of you. And I’m not letting the bastard cost me any more people I care about. Do you read me on that?”

He held Harkness’ eyes with his own, waiting, because Scotty Tremaine knew, far better than most, that Horace Harkness was capable of doing exactly what he’d just threatened to do. And between them, he and Iris Babcock almost certainly had the collection of talents—and contacts—to make it happen. But if they did, there was no way they could walk away clean. Too many knew how bitterly both of them hated Summervale.

Silence hovered, and then, finally, Harkness gave a jerky nod. It might not have looked like much to someone else, but Scotty Tremaine recognized a silently given word of honor when he saw it.

“Better,” he said, and squeezed the senior chief’s shoulder again. “Better.”

He pulled the handheld back out of the toolbox and checked to be sure he hadn’t damaged its display when he threw it down, then looked back at Harkness with a crooked smile compounded almost equally of humor and bitterness.

“Like I say, I won’t be upset if—when—something happens to Summervale, Senior Chief,” he said. “But you and Gunny Babcock don’t have to make it happen.”

Harkness raised an eyebrow at him, and Tremaine barked a short, harsh laugh.

“You and I both know it’s going to happen, Horace,” he said, with the certitude of a Delphic oracle. “I don’t care where Summervale hides. It won’t do him one damned bit of good, because you and I both know damned well the Captain’s going to kill him as soon as she gets home.”


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