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Dempsey’s Bar

HMSS Hephaestus

Manticore Planetary orbit

Manticore Binary System

March 20, 1906 PD


“i don’t think you’re hearing everything Thomas and I are saying, Paul.”

Alistair McKeon’s eyes were bleak, his expression grim, as he looked across the private dining room’s table at Paul Tankersley.

“I hear everything you’ve said, Alistair,” Tankersley replied. “You and Tomas both. And I deeply appreciate how concerned both of you are. Hell, I’m concerned! But done is done. He’s challenged me, and I accepted the challenge.”

“Only because I was ninety seconds late to the party,” Tomas Ramirez said bitterly. “If I’d gotten there even two minutes earlier—”

“He was already launched by then, Tomas. And I didn’t have any reason to think—”

“That’s only because I hadn’t already warned you what it was like when he was still a Marine! And if I’d been there—”

“Oh, stop it!” Tankersley said sharply. “You couldn’t have known what was coming any more than I did!”

“No, but I could damn well have stopped it when it did go down,” Ramirez grated.

“After I broke his nose and took out one of his teeth?” Tankersley barked a laugh. “You really think he wouldn’t have issued the challenge after that no matter who’d been there?”

“I know he wouldn’t have, because he’d have been fucking unconscious on a stretcher. Or on his way to the station morgue! That’s the problem, Paul. You pulled your damned punch!”

“I couldn’t just kill him on the spot, no matter what he said.”

“You didn’t have to kill him; you only had to take him down and then walk away. You were too fucking civilized!”

Tomas Ramirez seldom used profanity or obscenities, but he was prepared to make an exception today. His voice was hammered iron, and Tankersley’s eyes were hot as he half-glared at his friends. He opened his mouth again, but McKeon raised a pacific hand before he could speak.

“Look,” he said, “Tomas may not be the most diplomatic soul in the galaxy, and you know—now—that he has his own, call it an institutional bone to pick with Summervale. And what that son of a bitch said about Honor makes this personal for all three of us. Especially for you. But the critical point here is that there’s no way that bastard didn’t know exactly what he was doing when he goaded you into punching him out. And that means it damned well didn’t ‘just happen.’”

“He doesn’t even know me,” Tankersley half-protested.

“And what the fuck does that have to do with it?” Ramirez demanded harshly. “That man’s a professional duelist. Picking quarrels—goading people into attacking him so we can get them out on the dueling ground—is what he does.”

“Then he should be in prison!”

“And he would be if the Crown could prove people paid him to shoot their enemies under cover of the law,” Ramirez shot back. “But he’s good, Paul. He’s really, really good. And I’ll guarantee you a gun like his doesn’t come cheap. He’s careful not to take on too many ‘commissions’ or space them close enough together to create probable cause for an investigation, so I’m damned sure hiring him costs a bundle each time he does take a job. And the way he got to you, the things he said about Dame Honor . . .” He shook his head. “There’s only one person who could be behind this, and you know it.”

“I know who you’re talking about,” Tankersley replied. “But to be honest, I find it hard to believe even he might think he’d get away with something like this. I have to admit the possibility, and God knows he’s the most likely suspect, assuming this really is a put-up job. I just . . . I just have trouble wrapping my mind around how he could possibly expect this wouldn’t lead straight back to him.”

“I don’t know Young—North Hollow—as well as you do,” McKeon said. “I didn’t ever find myself stuck as his XO, for which I’m more grateful than I could possibly say. But I’ve done a lot of poking around over the years since he tried to screw Honor over in Basilisk, and there’s nothing—nothing, Paul!—that I’d put past that man. You probably know more about what happened between them at the Academy than I do, but I’ve dug up enough to make me want to put my boot right up his ass. And the other thing I know is that the man’s a complete sociopath. Right up to the moment they cashiered him, he expected his old man to ride in and snatch him out of the fire yet again. For most people, what actually happened would probably constitute a rude awakening, but I’ll guarantee you it hasn’t in his case. Just like nothing that ever happened to him is his fault, he’s absolutely convinced he can do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it. Hell, he’s got proof of it, as far as he’s concerned! The whole frigging Conservative Association—and the Liberal Party—ran cover for him.”

“You may be right about that. No”—Tankersley shook his head—“scratch that. You are right. But that doesn’t change the situation. I still laid hands on Summervale. Hell, if he’d wanted to, he could’ve pressed charges against me for attempted murder! Or did you two forget I hold a fifth-degree black belt in coup de vitesse? There’s a reason my hands are legally considered deadly weapons, and the truth is, I came within a centimeter of putting him down as hard—and maybe even as permanently—as even you could wish Tomas. I was that angry.”

His face was bleak, and Alistair McKeon felt his own smolder of rage. No one was repeating what Summervale had said about Honor. Not yet, anyway. But it was there, just waiting.

“Tell me, Captain Tankersley—are you really that good a fuck? Are you so good she was willing to throw away her entire command to save you? Or was it just that she was that desperate to have someone—anyone—between her legs?”

There was nothing the bastard could have said that could have hurt Honor worse. Except for the suggestion he’d also made that she’d held her course in Hancock, gotten thousands of additional Navy personnel killed, just because she refused to abandon the space station on which her lover was trapped.

“Instead of doing that, he issued the challenge,” Tankersley continued. “And I’d accepted it before you got there to tell me about his reputation. But I’ll be honest with you both—after the things he said about her, and the fact that he said them in a public place where I know damned well some sick son of a bitch will repeat them to her even if no one dares to do it in print, I wouldn’t have walked away from this even if I could.”

His face clenched in anger, and McKeon reached across to grip his shoulder.

He was right, the captain thought, and as far as McKeon was concerned, that was the final proof of who was pulling the strings.

Only a tiny handful of people knew Honor Harrington as well as Alistair McKeon did. Any healthy human being would be disgusted by the things Denver Summervale had said about her, but only that tiny handful could understand how vulnerable to them she was. Because only that tiny handful had ever been allowed deep enough inside to recognize how completely she’d shut down that part of her life after her Academy experiences. How hard and how far she’d run to hide from even the possibility of risking a relationship after Pavel Young attempted to rape a first-year midshipwoman and then used his family name to attempt to destroy his intended victim.

That wasn’t the only thing that had happened to her, either. McKeon knew that much, although he suspected the only person who might know the full truth was Michelle Henke. And now possibly Paul Tankersley. But Alistair McKeon knew enough. And he totally understood the rage—the fury—pulsing through Tankersley at this moment. Hell, he felt it himself!

And then there were the political ramifications.

“I understand how that’s going to affect her, Paul,” he said quietly. “I really do. And in your place, I’d want to put a bullet through the bastard myself. Don’t think for a moment I wouldn’t. But you need to think about what it will do to her if this son of a bitch kills you.”

“Of course I’ve thought about it.” Tankersley looked away, his voice harsh. “How could I not think about it? That’s part of the problem.” He looked back at McKeon. “I was stupid enough to let him goad me into doing something like this to her, too. My God, Alistair! Do you think I don’t realize how she’s going to react to this? Even if I walk away clean tomorrow morning, she’ll know what happened. She’ll know how it happened. And if I don’t walk away—”

He broke off, and McKeon squeezed his shoulder again.

“All right, Paul. I understand—we understand. And the last thing you need is for us to get inside your head and mess with it at a moment like this. It’s just . . . just that I want to be sure you know what you have to do tomorrow. That whatever it may be for you, this isn’t any ‘affair of honor’ for him.” His hand tightened with bruising force. “You need to take this bastard down.”

“I know.” Tankersley reached up and patted her hand on his shoulder. “I know, Alistair.”

“Good.”

McKeon sat back, reaching for his coffee cup, and Tankersley glanced down as his chrono chimed. He looked at it for a moment, then raised his eyes again with a crooked smile.

“For what I expect are obvious reasons, I need to get as much sleep tonight as I can. And that was a reminder that I’m having an early supper with my mom. I’ve got a shuttle to catch if I’m going to make it on time.”

“Does she—?”

“No, and I’m damned well not telling her.” Tankersley managed a more natural-looking smile. “There’s no point worrying her when it’ll be over in about fifteen hours, anyway. But I do want to spend some time with her.”

“Of course you do.” McKeon stood and held out his hand. “Tell her hello for me.”

“I will.” Tankersley gripped his hand, then looked at Ramirez. “Oh-four-hundred tomorrow, Tomas?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good! And I’ll see both of you at breakfast, after.”

“I’ll be there for that, too,” Ramirez told him.

“Then I’d best be going. It always pisses Mom off when I’m late.”

He nodded to his friends, and left, and McKeon settled back into his chair, looking across the table at Ramirez.

“He doesn’t get it, Tomas,” the captain said heavily. “God help me, I think he still doesn’t get it. Not really.”

“He gets it here.” Ramirez tapped his temple. “He just doesn’t get it on a gut level. Damn.” The Marine shook his head, his eyes bitter. “He’s just too good a man, Alistair.”

“But he knows North Hollow.” McKeon sounded like a man trying to convince himself of something. “He has to know North Hollow wants him dead, if only because the sick son of a bitch knows how losing him would just destroy Honor.”

“Assuming it’s really North Hollow,” Ramirez said, then barked a wolf’s laugh at McKeon’s expression. “Of course it is! But like we’ve just been saying, there’s no way in hell to prove it. And there’s that tiny little corner somewhere down inside Paul that keeps whispering crap about ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ And there’s that other tiny corner that thinks not even North Hollow could be stupid enough to think he could get away with outright murder.”

“There’s nothing North Hollow can’t convince himself he can get away with.”

“You know that. I know that. Hell, intellectually, Paul knows that!”

Silence fell. A brooding, unhappy silence.

“You think he’s really up to this?” McKeon asked finally. “I’m not talking about guts. I don’t think I know anybody any gutsier than Paul! And if it was any other kind of fight, I’d back him in a heartbeat. But this . . .”

“I don’t know.” Ramirez sighed. “You know Livitnikov pushed for the Ellington Protocol?”

“He did?” McKeon’s eyes narrowed. “Paul never told me that.”

“Well, he could hardly insist, since Paul was the challenged party. But he made it clear his principal would ‘understand’ if Paul chose to insist on it.” Ramirez’s lips twisted in disgust. “In a lot of ways, Livitnikov’s as big a snake as Summervale.”

McKeon nodded, his eyes worried, as he processed the new information.

Milorad Livitnikov was a Landing City attorney and financial advisor, with a reputation which was no more savory than it had to be. He’d represented quite a few professional criminals in his time, both in court and—if rumor was correct—in other, off-the-record fashion, as a go-between and broker of any number of illegal transactions. It was unusual, to say the least, to find him so much in the foreground, but he’d been Denver Summervale’s friend—or his “associate,” at least—for decades. They were semi-regular dinner companions, when they were both in town at the same time, so no one could prove Livitnikov hadn’t “just happened” to be here, in the Hephaestus Dempsey’s, at just the right moment for Summervale’s “spontaneous” confrontation with Tankersley. In fact, the “friendly dinner” had been on Livitnikov’s calendar for over a week, and he’d reserved a table at Dempsey’s three days earlier. All purely coincidentally, of course.

Just like it “just happened” Livitnikov had acted as Summervale’s second in a previous duel several T-years earlier. So it was totally understandable, when the quarrel with Tankersley just erupted out of nowhere, for Summervale to ask his oh-so-conveniently-present friend to act for him again. What could be more reasonable than that?

It all screamed setup, although no one could prove a thing. And if Ramirez was right about Livitnikov’s pressure for the Ellington Protocol . . . 

Dueling was legal in the Star Kingdom. Duels were frowned upon these days, and far less common than they’d once been, but the practice remained as an artifact of the Star Kingdom’s earliest days, when concepts of justice had been . . . simpler and more direct.

Manticore was scarcely unique among the galaxy’s star nations in having once permitted legal duels. In fact, it was probable that at least half of them had allowed it, with or without benefit of a formal code duello, in their wilder and woolier days, and scores of them—like Manticore—still did. That didn’t necessarily constitute a good reason it should remain legal, however. And the fact that it did didn’t keep a great many people, including Alistair McKeon, from thinking that should have been changed long ago. On the other hand, he had to admit there’d been at least two occasions in his own life when he’d come within an eyelash of resorting to the practice himself. In fact, he was tempted every time he so much as thought about Pavel Young.

There were restrictions, of course. Serving officers couldn’t challenge one another, for example, and debtors couldn’t challenge their creditors, just as no party to a legal suit could challenge any of the other litigants. But for the most part, the practice was accepted, however grudgingly, by the Star Kingdom at large as part of its code of honor.

Most duels were fought because someone genuinely believed his or her honor had been impugned. It struck McKeon as a stupid way to go about resolving insults, and he’d never been particularly interested in the code duello’s provisions until Tankersley was challenged. He’d done quite a bit of research since, and he’d discovered that the vast majority of them were fought under the Dreyfus Protocol. Under that protocol, each duelist had only a five-round magazine, and they were limited to the exchange of single shots at a range of forty meters, almost half the length of a standard soccer pitch. That was an extraordinarily long range for the archaic pistols of the dueling grounds, which meant that more often than not, neither party managed to hit the other with his or her first shot. More than that, the Master of the Field was charged with convincing both parties honor had been satisfied after each exchange, and either party—challenger or challenged—could declare that it had been. Even more importantly, perhaps, five rounds were all either side got, under any circumstances, and any duel automatically ended after the first exchange in which blood was drawn.

Because of those limitations, the Dreyfus Protocol practically never resulted in fatalities. It had happened, but that was almost always an accident neither combatant had desired . . . openly, at least. Honor required that the duelist stand his or her enemy’s fire; it did not require that enemy’s death, and that was what the Dreyfus Protocol was intended to accomplish.

But the Ellington Protocol was different, and there’d been pressure to ban it for decades, even among many who otherwise vociferously defended the practice of dueling. Under the Ellington Protocol, the range was only twenty meters, each duelist had a ten-round magazine, and each of them was free to fire without pause until his opponent went down or dropped his own weapon in surrender. It was, in fact, the protocol upon which someone who fully intended to kill his opponent insisted.

“Paul knows Livitnikov suggested the Ellington Protocol?” McKeon asked after a moment.

“He knows Livitnikov would have been amenable to it.” Ramirez shrugged bitterly. “The man’s a lawyer, Alistair, and one of the true bottom feeders, at that. He knows exactly how to weasel-word a sentence to make his point without saying anything you could nail him on in court. But he made it abundantly clear to me when Paul asked me to serve as his second. He never actually said it to Paul, of course. That’s not how these things are done.”

McKeon nodded again. From the moment a challenge was issued, all contact between the principals was prohibited. They communicated only through their seconds, and neither principal was a party to the actual conversation.

“I love the Star Kingdom,” Ramirez said. “It took me and my family in when my father died and Trevor’s Star went down. It’s been good to us, we’ve done really well here, and I’ve always known Manticore was the only chance San Martin might ever be liberated from the Peeps. But if there’s one thing about Manticore that never made sense to me, it’s this whole dueling thing. It just seems so custom-designed for abuse! I always thought that, and now, with Paul—”

“And now with Paul, you’ve got proof it is,” McKeon said bitterly. “But you told Paul about Livitnikov’s attitude?”

“Of course I did! But Paul knows how pissed off I am, and he knows you and I both think this is a bought-and-paid-for setup, so I’m not positive he believed me. Oh”—the colonel waved one powerful hand—“he doesn’t think I’m inventing things, but I think that ‘civilized’ part of him’s half-convinced my own emotions might cause me to misconstrue Livitnikov’s mealymouthed circumlocutions.”

“What kind of Marine knows a word like ‘circumlocutions’?” McKeon asked, and Ramirez chuckled sourly at the feeble bid to break the tension just a bit.

“I know. Doesn’t mesh well with our hard-won reputation for simpleminded violence,” he said.

“Agreed.”

McKeon flashed a brief smile. Then his expression sobered again.

“But I don’t like this at all,” he said. “Not because it surprises me, but because of what it confirms.”

“Confirms for you and me, anyway,” Ramirez agreed.

“Damn.” McKeon drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

A part of him was positive Tankersley had gone far farther than he was willing to admit in acknowledging—to himself—that Summervale was a hired gun, and that part wanted to rage at his friend for not withdrawing from the duel. There was no legal compulsion for him to actually meet Summervale. He could withdraw—legally—at any moment until they both stepped onto the field. If he did, he would be labeled a coward by all “right thinking” people, which would probably include at least some who might sit on future promotion boards. That was especially true given that, for whatever provocation, Tankersley had laid hands on Summervale in what—as he’d just pointed out himself—could have been classified as assault with a deadly weapon. A “man of honor” who had physically assaulted another was under much more powerful social pressure to meet the man he’d “wronged.”

But that social pressure wasn’t the real reason Tankersley would not—could not—withdraw. Not even the way Summervale’s words would hurt Honor on a personal level was the real reason.

Politics, McKeon thought despairingly. Why does it always have to be the goddamned politics?! Why can’t the fucking vultures just leave her the hell alone?!

It was obvious that Summervale’s slurs had been designed as a multifaceted weapon, and in many ways, the potential political damage was just as deadly as the duel might prove to Tankersley, at least on the grand scale of things. So far, none of the Opposition scandal sheets or boards had repeated Summervale’s despicable allegations, and they wouldn’t while the duel remained unfought. If they did, Honor—or Tankersley—could sue for defamation and libel, and the Star Kingdom’s libel laws had painful, very sharp teeth. Anyone who’d repeated the allegations would have to prove they were true (which, manifestly, no one could) or lose in court, and any jury would award astronomical damages to a peer of the realm, not to mention the way in which the verdict would nullify those allegations as a future political weapon.

But if Tankersley withdrew from the duel now, it would be taken as an admission that he’d chosen not to contest Summervale’s accusations. That wouldn’t prove they were true but it would extend a presumption that they were. In order to win a defamation or libel suit under those conditions, he and Honor would have to prove they were false, which they could no more prove legally than their opponents could prove the reverse.

Given the way she and Young remained rallying points for the Opposition and the pro-Government parties, respectively, the damage in the Star Kingdom would have been severe. What the political fallout for the Protectorate of Grayson’s first female steadholder might be like . . . 

Whether Tankersley lived or died, the fact that he’d faced Summervale at all would prevent that from happening.

And he knew it.

But if he died, the consequences for Honor Harrington would be catastrophic, no matter what else happened.

“I’m half inclined to get Paul on the com and have another go at him.” McKeon shook his head. “He can’t afford to screw around with this guy, Tomas! I already knew that much. But this—!”

“We’ve both taken our best shot,” Ramirez said heavily. “And under most circumstances, I wouldn’t be this worried. Like Paul says, practically nobody gets killed under the Dreyfus Protocol. Those antiques are hardly pulsers. They aren’t going to just vaporize a limb or something even if they manage to hit each other at that range, and he’ll only have to take one shot. Even assuming he’s hit—unless he gets hit squarely in the head or something, which would take a damned good shot—the trauma team will be standing right there to stabilize him and rush him to the hospital.”

“Sure. And Summervale just happens to be a ‘damned good shot.’ Which means that unless Paul hits him in the head—or somewhere else incapacitating—first, the chance of his getting hit there goes up like a missile!”

“Of course it does.” Ramirez’s expression was acid-etched iron. “And I’ve told him that, just like you have. And up here”—he tapped his temple again—“he gets it. But I don’t know about here, Alistair.” He thumped his chest. “Paul’s one of the best men I know, but he’s not Dame Honor.” His eyes met McKeon’s. “He just doesn’t have that killer in his DNA.”


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