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Theisman snarled in triumph, yet under his snarl was the bitter knowledge that his triumph would be brief. He could finish the cruiser with another salvo, but he'd already crippled her. The Captain would finish her off; his job was to damage as many Manticorans as he could before Thunder came back.
"Take the destroyer!" he barked.
"Aye, Sir!"
Principality slewed to starboard, presenting her reloaded port broadside to Troubadour, but the Manticoran destroyer saw her coming, and her skipper knew his business. Theisman's entire body tensed as the Manticoran fired a laser broadside three times as heavy as his own into him, then snapped up to present the belly of his wedge before the missiles could reach him. Principality heaved in agony, and the plot flickered. Two of his birds popped up, fighting for a look-down shot through Troubadour's upper sidewall, but her point defense picked them off, and Theisman swore as the Manticoran rolled back down with viperish speed to bring her lasers to bear once more.
But Principality was rolling, too, and her starboard broadside fired before Troubadour had completed her maneuver. His ship bucked again as energy blasted deep into her hull, but this time one of his laser heads got through. There was no way to tell how much damage it had done—there wasn't enough time to tell what his damage was!—but he knew he'd hurt her.
"Come to oh-niner-three three-five-niner!"
Principality dived towards the moon, twisting to present the top of her own wedge to Troubadour while her surviving missile crews fought to reload. The single laser in her port broadside picked off a Grayson LAC that never even saw her, and then she shuddered as a Grayson light cruiser put a laser into her forward impellers. Her acceleration dropped and her wedge faltered, but the ready lights glowed on the four surviving tubes of her port broadside, and Theisman sent her rolling madly back to bring them to bear on the Grayson.
He never made it. Fearless came screaming back on a reciprocal of her original course, and a hurricane of energy fire ripped through Principality's sidewall as if it hadn't existed.
"Sidewall down!" Hillyard shouted. "We've lost everything in the port broadside!" The exec cursed. "Emergency reactor shutdown, Skip!"
Principality went to emergency power, and Theisman's face relaxed. His ship was done, but she'd accomplished more than Franks' entire task force, and there was no point throwing away those of her people who still survived.
"Strike the wedge," he said quietly.
Hillyard looked at him in shock for just one instant, then stabbed his panel, and Principality's impeller wedge died.
Theisman watched his display, wondering almost calmly if he'd been in time. Striking the wedge was the universal signal of surrender, yet if someone had already committed to fire—or wasn't in the mood to accept surrenders ...
But no one fired. Troubadour rolled up onto his port side, streaming air from her own wounds, and Theisman sighed in relief when Principality trembled as a tractor locked onto her and he realized he and his remaining people would live after all.
"Sir," Lieutenant Trotter said softly, "Fearless is hailing us."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Honor leaned back as the hatch sighed open and a very ordinary-looking brown-haired man in the scarlet and gold of a Masadan commander walked through it, escorted by Major Ramirez.
Ramirez was six centimeters shorter than Honor, but San Martin, the single habitable planet of Trevor's Star, was one of the heaviest-gravity worlds man had settled. Its sea-level air pressure was high enough to produce near-toxic concentrations of carbon-dioxide and nitrogen, and the major reflected the gravity to which he had been born. He was built like a skimmer turbine with an attitude problem, and he hated the People's Republic of Haven with a passion no native-born Manticoran could match. At the moment, his complete non-expression showed exactly how he felt, and she sensed the battle between emotion and life-long discipline which held those feelings at bay.
Yet it was the major's prisoner who interested her. He looked far more composed than he could possibly be, and she felt an unwilling respect for him as he gazed levelly back at her. He'd done an outstanding job—better, she suspected, than she could have done under the circumstances—yet she sensed an odd sort of strain under his self-possessed surface and wondered if it had anything to do with his request for this interview with her.
The commander tucked his cap under his arm and braced to attention.
"Commander Thomas Theisman, Navy of the Faithful, Ma'am," he said crisply—in an accent that had never come from Masada.
"Of course you are, Commander." Honor's irony was impaired by her persistently slurred speech, and she saw his eyes widen as he took in her dead, ravaged face and bandaged left eye. But though she waited expectantly, he refused to rise to the bait of her response, and she shrugged.
"What was it you wished to see me about, Commander?"
"Ma'am, I —"
Theisman glanced at Ramirez, then back at her, his appeal for privacy as eloquent as it was silent. The major stiffened, but Honor regarded the Havenite thoughtfully as he closed his mouth tight and stared back at her.
"That will be all for the moment, Major," she said at last, and Ramirez bristled for an instant, then clicked to attention and withdrew in a speaking silence. "And now, Commander?" she invited. "Was there something you wanted to tell me about why the People's Republic attacked Her Majesty's Navy?"
"Captain Harrington, I'm a registered Masadan citizen," Theisman replied. "My vessel is—was—the Masadan Naval Ship Principality."
"Your ship was the destroyer Breslau, built by the Gunther Yard for the People's Republic of Haven," Honor said flatly. His eyes widened a fraction, and the mobile corner of her mouth smiled thinly. "My boarding parties found her builder's plaque, as well as her splendidly official Masadan registry, Commander Theisman." Her smile vanished. "Shall we stop playing games now?"
He was silent for a moment, then replied in a voice as flat as hers.
"My ship was purchased by the Masadan Navy, Captain Harrington. My perso
"Very well, Commander," she sighed. "But if you intend to stick to that, may I ask why you wanted to see me?"
"Yes, Ma'am," Theisman replied, yet for the first time he appeared clearly uncomfortable. "I—" He clenched his jaw, then went on steadily. "Captain, I don't know what you intend to do about the base on Blackbird, but I thought you should know. There are Manticoran perso
"What?!" Honor half-stood before she could stop herself. "If this is some kind of—" she began ominously, but he interrupted her.
"No, Ma'am. Captain Y—" He cleared his throat. "One of my superiors," he went on carefully, "insisted that the survivors from HMS Madrigal be picked up. They were. Thereafter, they were delivered to Blackbird to be held by ... the appropriate local authorities."
Honor sank back into her chair, and his painstaking choice of words sounded a warning deep in her brain. She had no doubt Masada would have happily abandoned any of Madrigal's survivors to their fate—indeed, she'd assumed that was what had happened and tried not to think of the deaths they must have died. Now she knew some of them had lived, instead, but something about the way Theisman had said "appropriate local authorities" chilled her instant surge of joy. He was distancing himself from those authorities, at least as much as his cover story allowed. Why?