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Dempsey’s Bar

HMSS Hephaestus

Manticore Planetary Orbit

Manticore Binary System

March 27, 1906 PD


“what the hell is going on, Harkness?” Sergeant Major Iris Babcock growled.

“Say what?” Horace Harkness looked up from his beer in surprise. He’d been too deep in thought to notice her stalking across the bar toward his secluded corner.

“I asked what the hell is going on.” Babcock glowered at him. “I know damned well something is, and I know damned well that you’re involved with it. So spill.”

Harkness gave her his very best “innocent as the new-fallen snow” expression. She snorted.

“Don’t try that ‘don’t have a clue’ bullshit on me, Harkness. I’ve known you too long for you to pull it off.”

“So it wouldn’t do me any good to tell you I really don’t have a clue what you’re talking about?”

“No.”

The red-haired sergeant major looked at him, her expression implacable, and he grimaced. Somehow he hadn’t anticipated this particular conversation. He should have. Nobody had told any of Prince Adrian’s Marines what was really up, but Gunny Babcock was at least as well tapped-in on the Marine side as he was on the Navy’s. So even if she didn’t know what was going on, she obviously knew—as she’d just so tactfully pointed out—that something was. And by cornering him on the civvy side of the station, she could push him for answers she might not have gotten—or wanted to ask for—in a shipboard setting.

“What makes you think that if something’s going on, and it obviously involves the jarheads, not us more cerebral Navy types, I’d know about it and you wouldn’t?” he asked in the tone of a man sparring for time.

“Because Major Yestachenko suddenly doesn’t know squat. Which strikes me as a little odd. And then I find out Lieutenant Tremaine just had a conversation with Major Hibson about volunteering you and him for Nike One. Which strikes me as even odder, given that I happen to know Colonel Ramirez happened to bring a pretty competent pinnace crew of his own across from Nike. That suggests that whatever’s going on, Lieutenant Tremaine knows about it. And if he knows—”

She raised an eyebrow at the senior chief, and Harkness snorted mentally.

“If there was ‘something going on,’ and if Major Yestachenko didn’t tell you about it, what makes you think I’d tell you about it, even if I knew anything. Which, of course,” he added just a tad insincerely, “I don’t.”

Babcock glowered at him, but there was less wattage behind the glower than many people might have expected, given Harkness’ legendary history with the Royal Manticoran Marines. True, he’d actually stayed out of any spectacular trouble for a couple of years now, but a single warm day did not a summer make. As surely as the sun would rise, eventually the shore patrol would be summoned to collect him and his Marine sparring partner—or partners—after yet another epic confrontation.

Some people probably thought that was because Harkness hated Marines. Babcock had thought that, actually, until the two of them served together under Dame Honor in Yeltsin. They’d been assigned to different ships, but they’d run into one another more than once, even before Blackbird, and she’d realized something about him.

He just liked to fight.

And he wasn’t like a lot of other men—and women—she’d known, both in the Corps and in the Navy, who fought at the drop of a hat. He didn’t fight because he was a bully, or destructive. In fact, those two qualities were the exact opposite of Horace Harkness. And it wasn’t because of some inner demon of rage or because he hated discipline or truly had anything against the Corps, either. He just liked to fight, and when he did, he wanted someone who’d be a challenge, someone who was up to his weight. Well, and he didn’t want to pick fights with someone in his own chain of command. So he picked Marines—the toughest readily available dance partners he could find. In its own way, she’d decided, that was almost a kind of compliment, although neither he nor the Royal Marines would admit it.

And then there was the other side of him. The one he worked so hard to keep other people from seeing.

Harkness hadn’t been part of the landing force that broke into Blackbird Base, but Babcock had.

Colonel Ramirez—he’d been Major Ramirez at the time—had commanded the ground attack force, and Babcock had been right beside him when HMS Fearless’ Marines fought their way into the Masadan Base’s cellblocks and discovered what had happened to the Manticoran POWs. The murders. The torture. The rapes. Harkness hadn’t been there for that, but Babcock was pretty sure Harkness had no idea she’d overheard him talking to Lieutenant Tremaine afterward.

Alistair McKeon had assigned Tremaine as Dame Honor’s cutter pilot and he’d assigned himself as an additional bodyguard. Which meant he’d been there when she found out what the Masadans had done to her people. He’d seen the aftermath—the bodies, the brutalized survivors, the pools of blood—just like Babcock, He’d seen Ensign Jackson screaming as Dame Honor gathered her into her arms, heard Jackson’s broken description of what she’d somehow managed to survive, what had been done to her and Lieutenant Commander Brigham, and he was only a kid. It had been bad enough for her; obviously, it had been worse for him. She’d realized that even at the time, before she’d learned how well he’d known Mercedes Brigham. When he’d seen what those bastards had done to her . . . 

He’d held it together, though. He might be young, but he was one of the good ones. She’d realized that even before Blackbird, and what had happened there—especially if the stories about Dame Honor and the Masadan CO were true—only underscored that point. But afterward, when he’d had time to really think about it . . . 

Babcock probably understood the relationship between Harkness and Tremaine better than a lot of other people did. And the fact that she did gave her a considerably higher opinion of the SCPO than she would have admitted even under torture. A Marine had to remember her tribal loyalties, after all. But nobody who’d heard Harkness talking Tremaine through his reaction to the horrific atrocities visited upon Manticoran personnel—upon people they’d both known and deeply respected, like Commander Brigham—could really think of him as a blunt instrument.

And then there was the evening he’d bought her a beer. Bought her lots of beers, really; enough that her recollection got a little hazy. But not hazy enough for her to forget the way he’d listened to her about Summervale. Not just about what he’d done to Captain Tankersley, but what he’d done to Lieutenant Thurston—her lieutenant—all those years before. He’d sat there, and he’d both known how to listen and recognized the times when to just listen.

No, he could be an unmitigated pain in the ass, he was insufferably determined to do things his way, and it was a lot easier for an officer to extract obedience and military courtesy than it was to earn his respect, but he wasn’t a blunt instrument.

No matter how hard he worked at perfecting the image.

“Okay,” she said, “cards on the table.” She pulled out a chair, turned it around, dropped into it, braced her forearms on the top of the chairback, and leaned forward to face him across the table. “Whatever the hell you’re involved in—and if Lieutenant Tremaine’s involved, then I know damned well you are—it’s got something to do with Dame Honor. With what happened to Captain Tankersley.” Her expression was far grimmer than it had been, and her gray eyes bored into him across the table. “And according to a little birdie I know who works right here in Dempsey’s, Admiral Sarnow dropped by when Captain McKeon invited Commander Venizelos and Colonel Ramirez to a beer after Summervale killed Captain Tankersley. And then, all of a sudden, two days later, we have this exercise on Gryphon. Pardon me if my naturally suspicious mind put all of that together, added in Lieutenant Tremaine’s involvement, and came to the conclusion that the exercise in question stems from something the Admiral told the Captain and the Colonel. Which, given that he’s supposed to be in Bassingford and that he snuck out without a single soul noticing and came all the way to Hephaestus to tell them whatever it was in person, suggests that this ‘routine training exercise’ everybody’s so hot to organize is a consequence of that conversation they had.”

Harkness’ eyes flickered ever so slightly. That was the only flaw in his politely attentive innocent expression, but he knew Babcock had seen it. He’d always known she was sharp; clearly she was even sharper than he’d thought. And what the hell did he do now?

“Some random ‘little birdie’ just happened to tell you that? I think that constitutes what they call hearsay evidence, Gunny.”

“My little birdie’s right over there.” Babcock jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the on-duty shift manager who’d just stepped through the swinging doors from the kitchens. “He’s my second cousin. There’s ‘hearsay,’ and then there’s ‘hearsay.’ So, yeah, I’m pretty sure about my info.”

“Well, that makes this difficult.” Harkness grinned down into his beer, then took another swig and set the stein back on the table. “See, the thing is, Gunny, I don’t officially know a thing more than you do.”

“Officially,” she repeated.

“Sure. You know how it works.”

She nodded. Any senior noncommissioned officer “knew how it worked.” Otherwise, they wouldn’t be senior noncoms.

“It does have something to do with Dame Honor, doesn’t it?” she asked in a quieter voice, and he sighed.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I don’t begin to have the full skinny myself. That’s the truth. But, yeah. Near as I can figure it, the Admiral—or maybe Captain Corell—found out something about Summervale. Something he told the Skipper and Colonel Ramirez about. Now, if I had to guess, given that this training exercise was originally scheduled for week after next on Manticore, and it’s been moved up to tomorrow on Gryphon—and that Captain McKeon and Commander Venizelos have volunteered Prince Adrian and Apollo to lift Nike’s pinnaces to Gryphon, since she’s still in the shop—I’d have to say it’s because there’s someone on Gryphon the Colonel really, really wants to talk to.”

He sipped more beer, then looked at her again.

“Wonder who that could be?”


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