In Enemy Hands

"Direct hit on CIC!" a voice shouted over the com. "We're losing con..."

The voice chopped off in midsyllable. Smoke gouted from the main ventilation trunk before it slammed shut, and more damage alarms snarled.

"Bridge, this is Juno in Fusion Two!" The voice of Lieutenant Juno, Prince Adrian's junior engineering officer, came from the intercom. "I'm setting up here for damage control, but it doesn't look good."

"Status of Impeller One?" McKeon demanded.

"Gone, Sir," Juno said harshly. "We may have four or five beta nodes left, if I can get them back on-line, but that's it."

McKeon's face clenched. With her forward alpha nodes gone, Prince Adrian had lost her Warshawski sails... and Adler lay squarely in the heart of a hyper-space gravity wave, where only sails would permit a ship to maneuver. That single, devastating salvo from Katana had doomed his ship, and McKeon knew it.

"Helm, bring us forty degrees to port!" he snarled, and his gaze locked with Metcalf’s across the bridge as Harris acknowledged. "We're going down Ten's throat, Gerry. Hit the bastard with everything you've got!"

"Aye, aye, Sir." Metcalf hunched over her panel, fighting the destruction of her sensors and fire control systems as much as the enemy, and the ship bucked as still more missiles smashed through her crippled defenses to blot away weapons and the people who crewed them.

Honor dragged herself to her feet, Nimitz clinging to her shoulder. She felt blood dribbling down her chin from where she'd bitten her lip in her fall, but it was a distant awareness, one that belonged to someone else, far, far away, and she swept her eyes over the glaring crimson damage lights on McKeon's displays. She opened her mouth, then staggered and clung to the command chairs back as Prince Adrian heaved in fresh agony. She almost fell again, but she stayed upright somehow and grabbed McKeon's shoulder.

"Surrender, Alistair." She didn't raise her voice, yet its very calmness cut through the combat chatter and damage reports and the howl of alarms like a knife, and McKeon stared at her.

"But..." he began, but she shook her head and squeezed his shoulder hard.

"Surrender," she repeated. "That's an order."

Still McKeon stared at her, and she understood his agonized hesitation. His shame. In the five hundred-T-year history of the Royal Manticoran Navy, only thirty-two Queen’s ships had ever surrendered to an enemy.

"I said surrender, Captain!" she said more sharply. "We got the convoy out, but your entire forward impeller room's gone. Now surrender your ship before any more of our people die for nothing!"

"I..." McKeon closed his eyes, then shook himself and nodded. "Helm, turn us away from the enemy and kill your accel," he said in a voice like hammered iron. "Commander Metcalf, jettison every FTL-equipped drone with a locked in self-destruct command, then purge the computers and instruct all hands to destroy classified equipment and material. Lieutenant Sanko, hail Bandit Ten. Inform her captain we surrender."

Chapter Eighteen

"Who did you say?" Lester Tourville stared at the face on his com, certain he'd misunderstood, but Citizen Captain Bogdanovich nodded vigorously.

"There's no mistake, Citizen Admiral. May I play Citizen Captain Zacharys message for you?"

Tourville nodded, and the time and date header for a burst transmission message addressed to the chief of staff replaced Bogdanovich's image. The header disappeared in turn, and a slim, severe-faced woman appeared. The name patch on the left breast of her skinsuit said "ZACHARY, HELEN G," and her dark eyes seemed to hold an echo of the astonishment Tourville himself had just experienced. She looked out of the screen for a moment, then cleared her throat.

"Citizen Captain Bogdanovich," she said formally, "I have to report that PNS Katana, under my command, and PNS Nuada, Citizen Captain Wallace Turner, commanding, have engaged the Manticoran heavy cruiser Prince Adrian. After a long range exchange in which I was able to take maximum advantage of my towed missile pods, Prince Adrian was compelled to surrender. Katana suffered moderate damage, including twenty-one casualties, seven of them fatal, but Nuada sustained no damage, and my executive officers preliminary survey indicates that Prince Adrian's casualties were at least six times our own. We are examining the prize, but her crew's destruction of classified equipment seems to have been thorough, and the heavy damage we ourselves inflicted includes the destruction of her forward impeller room. My present impression is that repair will be impossible out of our available resources, and I'm afraid we'll have to destroy her rather than take her with us when we withdraw from the system."

She paused for a moment, as if drawing a mental breath, and went on in an almost mechanical voice.

"Among the prisoners we've so far identified are Prince Adrian's commander, Captain Alistair McKeon, RMN, and the commander of the escort squadron attached to the convoy which evaded our attack, Commodore Honor Harrington. We also have several of Commodore Harrington's staff officers in custody." She paused again, almost as if she found what she'd just said impossible to believe, and then her shoulders twitched in the tiniest of shrugs.

"Unless instructed otherwise, I intend to leave Citizen Captain Turner and his ship to complete the task of securing Prince Adrian and take my own command to rendezvous with the flagship in order to transfer my commissioned prisoners aboard as quickly as possible. I will continue my survey of my own damages en route to you, and hope to be able to give you a complete report on them upon my arrival. Citizen Commissioner Kuttner has been informed of my intentions and endorsed them. Zachary, clear."

The screen blanked briefly once more, and Bogdanovich's image reappeared. The chief of staffs eyes sparkled, and Tourville felt a huge grin spread across his face. He knew his excitement and delight were out of keeping with the addition of a mere heavy cruiser to the eleven prizes his ships had already taken in Adler, even if the cruiser in question did belong to the navy which had kicked the PN's butt regularly for six years now, but he didn't really care.

"Harrington," he murmured. "Harrington, by God!"

"Yes, Sir! I mean, yes, Citizen Rear Admiral!"

Bogdanovich returned his grin with interest, and Tourville tipped his chair back and crossed his legs. His smile turned almost dreamy, and he drew a cigar from his breast pocket. Affectation or not, there would never be a more appropriate moment for one.

Harrington, he thought. First Adler, and now Harrington!

He unwrapped the cigar, nipped its end off with strong, white teeth, then lit it with finicky precision while his mind considered what Public Information would do with this bit of news. A mere commodore shouldn't have been all that big a catch, especially not against the galaxy of Republican vice admirals and admirals the Manties had bagged. But there was nothing "mere" about this particular commodore. Honor Harrington was one of the bogeymen of the People’s Navy. She'd come to epitomize the vast gulf between the capabilities of the RMN and the People's Navy, and Tourville savored the sense of having taken a large first step to bridge that gulf. For all its small scale, his success at Adler was the most one-sided defeat the Manties had suffered in five hundred T-years, and their people would realize that just as clearly as Tourville did. That was probably already more than Citizen Admiral Theisman had dared hope for when he sent Tourville out, but now, as an unexpected bonus, ships under his command had also captured Harrington.