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"What if he comes back at the last minute with an offer to comply, Captain?" Van Dort asked, careful to observe the military proprieties under the current circumstances.
"If it's accompanied by an immediate start to the evacuation, I'll grant him an extension. If it isn't, I'll open fire."
Van Dort nodded slowly, and there was a different look in his eyes as he gazed at Terekhov and saw a side of him he hadn't previously met. He'd never made the mistake of imagining -Terekhov would flinch from any duty, however grim. But until this moment, he'd never truly realized just how dangerous a killer lurked inside his friend.
But Ansten FitzGerald wasn't surprised. He remembered the Nuncio System.
"Sir! Sir, the Manties have just made turnover!"
Hegedusic's head came up, and he strode quickly over to the officer who had spoken. He leaned over the lieutenant's shoulder, studying his plot.
"Where's his zero-velocity point at current deceleration?"
"Approximately eight million kilometers out, Admiral."
"Oh, is it now?" Hegedusic murmured in a soft, hungry tone, and turned to look at Levakonic. The Technodyne executive looked tense and unhappy, but as he met Hegedusic's eyes, they both smiled slowly.
Abigail Hearns rested her forearms lightly on the arms of her command chair. She could feel Helen's tension beside her, ratcheting steadily higher as the Squadron decelerated towards its attack position. She remembered the question Ragnhild had asked after their firing pass on Bogey Three at Nuncio, the question about how many people they'd just killed, and knew the same thoughts were passing through her surviving midshipwoman's mind at this moment.
If there was a single gram of cowardice in Helen Zilwicki, Abigail Hearns had never seen it. But this was even more cold-blooded and methodical than Captain Terekhov's ambush of the rogue Peeps in Nuncio. At least the Peeps had gotten into a range where they could theoretically have fired back. Eroica Station wouldn't have that option. If this Admiral Hegedusic failed to yield, hundreds, possibly thousands, of his perso
But what could she say? She wasn't positive how she felt about it, so how could she know what to say to someone else?
There were times, as Brother Albert, her old childhood confessor, had warned her there would be, when the teachings of Father Church and the brutal requirements of the profession of arms clashed. When the desire of a loving God for all of His children to live and grow under His gentle Testing collided in a universe of imperfect humans with the unyielding fact that for some of His children to live, others of them must die. That, Brother Albert had told her gently when she first admitted that she hungered for a naval career, would become part of her Test if her wish were granted. And, he'd warned her, it was a fortunate warrior indeed-or else a madman-who was never forced to confront the ambiguity of violence. The suspicion that it was expediency, and his own desire to live, and not morality or justice or even the defense of his own nation and family, which truly drove him to kill. The selfish desire to survive, not the noble willingness to risk death for what he believed in.
Brother Albert had been right. And as Abigail had studied her trade, mastered the professional requirements of a tactical officer, she'd come to realize that the highest duty of an officer wasn't to engage in honorable, face-to-face combat. It was to take her opponent by surprise. To ambush him. To shoot him in the back, without warning, without the ability to return her fire. Because if he had that opportunity, some of her people would die. And if she gave him that opportunity when she didn't have to, then the responsibility for those deaths would be hers.
It was a bitter lesson, one she'd accepted intellectually while still at Saganami Island, and one which had been turned into polished steel and hammered home on the surface of a planet called Refuge.
Yet this was different. The disparity in weapon technology meant there could be no possibility of return fire. But wasn't that the essence of successful tactics? Captain Terekhov was doing what every captain wanted to do, using any advantage he had or could create to engage the enemy without risking the lives of his own people. She knew that. And she knew Brother Albert would have told her Father Church and, far more importantly, God Himself would understand. Would forgive her for the blood on her hands, if indeed forgiveness was required.
But God could forgive anything to the truly humble and contrite heart. The question in Abigail Hearns' mind was whether or not she could forgive herself.
"Admiral!"
Hegedusic looked up from the com screen co
"Sir, we just picked up a transmission. I... think it's from Commodore Horster."
"You think ?" Hegedusic frowned, and the lieutenant gave him a helpless look.
"Sir, there's no header and no ID code. Just one word transmitted in clear."
"Well?" Hegedusic demanded when the young man paused.
"Sir, it just says 'Coming.'"