Honor Among Enemies

"I... haven't handled this well. If I hadn't held Artemis in New Berlin for the freighters, we would've crossed the rift up in the epsilon bands, and the Peeps never would have seen us. As for the way I spoke to Lady Harrington..."

He paused and shook his head again, and his voice was a bit stronger when he resumed.

"But that's beside the point now. We know where Wayfarer went off the plot, and we know what her vector was. If there's anyone left alive aboard her, or aboard the Peep, I suppose, we're the only people who can help them."

"I can't possibly justify taking Artemis over there," Fuchien said flatly. "First, the Peep may have survived, and her damage may be repairable. We could sail right into her broadside, and I ca

"I realize that, but we can't simply abandon them."

"We don't have a choice, Sir!" Fuchien's voice was harsh, and her eyes flickered with anger. Anger directed irrationally at Hauptman for making her say what she knew was true. "And, Sir, you may be this ship's owner, but I am her captain."

"Please, Captain." More than one eye widened in disbelief at the pleading in Hauptman's voice. "There has to be something we can do!"

Fuchien started to snap back, then closed her mouth and settled for a grim headshake. Hauptman's shoulders slumped, and the stricken look in his eyes hit Harold Sukowski like a hammer. He has to do something, the captain thought. He's hard, arrogant, a copper-plated son-of-a-bitch, but he understands responsibility, and Lady Harrington rubbed his nose in it. And so, Sukowski glanced at Stacey Hauptman, did making a fool of himself in front of his daughter. But Maggie's right. We can't risk the ship, however much we all wish we...

His thoughts chopped off, and he frowned. He heard Fuchien and Hauptman continuing to speak, but they sounded distant and far away as his brain worked at frantic speed.

"I'm sorry, Sir," Fuchien said at last, her voice much gentler than it had been. "I truly am. But there's nothing we can do."

"Maybe there is," Sukowski murmured, and every person on the bridge swung to stare at him. "We can't take Artemis out on SAR, no," he went on, "but there may be another way."

"I've got a visual on the Peep, Skipper," Scotty Tremaine said.

He and Harkness had taken a pi

Now Honor listened over her suit com as Scotty described Achmed's damages, and her heart sank. She was in one of the enlisted mess compartments which had somehow retained pressure, with her helmet off, and aside from a few small parties MacBride still had probing wreckage where someone might be trapped alive, all of her surviving perso

There were few enough of them that no one felt crowded, she told herself grimly, and waited until Scotty finished his report.

"All right," she said then. "She's not going anywhere with that bow damage, and we're drifting steadily apart. See if you can contact anyone on board. It sounds like they're in even worse shape than we are. If so, offer to take them off and bring them aboard Wayfarer. Tell them," she smiled bleakly, "we can figure out later who's whose prisoner."

"Aye, Ma'am," Tremaine replied, and sent his pi

"Is that wise, Skipper?" Cardones asked too quietly for anyone else to here. "We're on ca

"There can't be many left, Rafe," she replied, equally quietly, "and for all we know, they don't have any life support over there. We, on the other hand, may be able to get some of ours back. Our only hope is that we can and that one of their consorts has some idea where we both are and comes looking for us, but they may not have even that much hope. We have to give them the best chance we can. It's the only decent thing to do."

Cardones nodded slowly, then moved off to his own duties, and Honor looked back up and beckoned to the petty officer she'd been speaking to when Tremaine's report came in.

"All right, Haverty," she said briskly. "Once you've got that leak in Seven-Seventeen patched, I want pressure back in there. Commander Ryder needs to move people out of sickbay to relieve crowding, and that's the best place to put them. So as soon as we've got pressure, inform Senior Chief Lewis so we can organize a working party to move them. Once you're through in Seven-Seventeen, I want you and your people to do an eyeball on Main Environmental. Then..."

She went on speaking, passing her orders in the confident tones of a captain, and wondered how much longer she could keep the pretense up.

Stephen Holtz followed the Manty lieutenant into the mess compartment, and his face was numb, still frozen with the shock of loss. His casualties were far worse than the Q-ships, in both absolute and relative terms. There'd been twenty-two hundred men and women on his ship; the forty-six survivors had all been able to fit into the single pi

The Manty pilot, Lieutenant Tremaine, had invited him to take the copilots seat aboard the shuttle, and he'd watched the Q-ship's mangled hull grow through the view port. He'd found a bitter satisfaction in knowing he'd destroyed it just as certainly as it had destroyed his beautiful Achmed, yet he'd known it was foolish. These people were his enemies, but the only reason any of his people were still alive was because those enemies had taken them off the airless, powerless hulk which had once been a battlecruiser. And they, as he, had simply been doing their duty.

Duty, he thought bitterly. Oh, yes. We did our duty, didn't we? And look where it's brought us all.

A tall woman in a captain's skinsuit turned to face him, almond eyes dark with matching grief, and he nodded to her. Somehow the formality of a salute would have been out of place.

"Stephen Holtz, PNS Achmed," he said in a rusty-sounding voice.

"Honor Harrington, HMS Wayfarer, or what's left of her," she replied, and Holtz felt his eyes widen. So this was Honor Harrington. Just as dangerous as the intelligence reports suggested... and as good. Well, I suppose I've managed one thing no one else seemed able to do. She won't be pounding any more of our ships into wreckage.

"I'm sorry your losses were so high," Harrington said. "As you can see, my own..." She shrugged, and Holtz nodded. There was no point in either of them hating the other. "We may be in a little better position than I'd thought," she went on more briskly. "It looks like we can get at least some backup Environmental on line. It'll be ca