Echoes Of Honor

It was, by any imaginable standard, a ramshackle and jury-rigged command structure from the perspective of current skills levels. But most of the people in it had been given almost a full T-year to get to know one another, and Honor expected their trust and cohesion to overcome a lot of their rough edges.

It had better, anyway, she thought, and turned away from the display at last. Any more Peeps who just happened to drop by Cerberus would almost certainly come in fat, dumb, and happy, just as Thornegrave had. She expected that condition to last for perhaps another two to three months—long enough for Thornegrave and his intervention battalions to be reported as overdue at Seabring— and she intended to use those months to drill her new crews mercilessly.

Unfortunately, if the last T-year had been any indication, there wouldn't be many casual visitors in a period that short. Which meant she wouldn't be able to grab off any more handy transports like the Longstops. Which meant that in all probability there would still be better than a hundred thousand liberated prisoners trapped on Hell when the Peeps noticed Thornegrave's nonarrival and sent someone to find out where he was.

She didn't know who or what that someone would be. The logical thing for the Peeps to do would be to send a courier boat to check in with Camp Charon to determine that Thornegrave had arrived and departed. If that happened, she would still have a chance to bluff her way through and convince them he had—that whatever had happened to him and his ships had happened somewhere between Cerberus and Seabring. But even if she managed it, she would be on a short time count from that moment on, because even StateSec was bound to notice eventually that Cerberus had turned into a black hole for anything larger than a courier.

No, time was closing in on her, and she knew it. She would be fortunate to get just the three months she was counting on—or praying for, at least—and every additional day would represent its own individual miracle. Somehow, in whatever time she had left, she had to find a way to grab the shipping she needed to get all of her people off Hell.

And she would, she thought grimly. One way or another, she would.

"All right, people. Let's get to it." Citizen Rear Admiral Paul Yearman looked around the table in his briefing room and smiled a wintry smile as the side conversations died and all eyes turned to the head of the table. He waited another moment, then glanced at the man sitting beside him. "Would you care to begin, Citizen General?" he invited politely.

"Thank you, Citizen Admiral," Seth Chernock acknowledged, then paused a moment for effect, letting his frigid eyes sweep over the ship commanders gathered around the table. They were a very mixed lot: four in StateSec's crimson and black, and fourteen, counting the two transports' skippers, in the People's Navy's gray-and-green. His senior ground commanders were also present, for it was important for everyone to understand what was pla

It was not, Chernock thought grimly, the most cohesive command team imaginable. Unfortunately, it was the only one he'd been able to scrape together, and it had taken him nine standard days to assemble all his expeditionary force's bits and pieces and get it underway. The good news was that he'd managed to put together an escort of no less than ten battlecruisers (although one of them was one of the old Lion-class) and six heavy cruisers, and the People's Marines had been able to provide two of their Roughneck-class fast attack transports. The bad news was that he'd been able to come up with less than twenty-seven thousand troops to put aboard those transports. Of course, if his warships could secure control of the high orbitals, that should be plenty of ground-based firepower. The prisoners on Hades might outnumber his troops by better than twenty-to-one, but a few kinetic interdiction strikes would take care of that nicely. Perhaps even more to the point, Gisborne was an ex-Marine himself, and he'd gone out of his way to establish a sense of rapport among his subordinates, StateSec and Marine alike. All things considered, Chernock was extremely pleased with the way his ground force command team was shaping up.

He was less enthusiastic about the naval side of things, although that certainly wasn't Yearman's fault. Chernock had drafted the Citizen Rear Admiral because he knew his own limitations. He was primarily an administrator and a pla

And from all he'd so far seen, Yearman had been an excellent choice. He didn't appear to be an inspired strategist, but he had a firm grasp of the tactical realities, and he'd immediately set out to hammer his mismatched squadron into something like a coherent fighting force.

Nine days, unfortunately, wasn't very long. Chernock suspected that an all-Navy task group could have gotten itself sorted out and drilled to an acceptable standard in that much time, but three of Yearman's battlecruisers—Ivan IV,Cassander, and Modred —were commanded by StateSec officers, and so was Morrigan, one of his two Mars-class heavy cruisers. Those officers, and especially Citizen Captain Isler, Modred's skipper, deeply resented being placed under effective Navy command, even at Chernock's direct orders. Citizen Captain Sorrenson, Morrigan's CO, was probably as resentful as Isler, if less inclined to show it, and it hadn't helped that Yearman's drills had made it painfully obvious that all four SS ships had been trained to a much lower standard than their Navy counterparts. The discovery of their operational inferiority had only honed the StateSec officers' resentment... and probably inspired a certain carefully concealed contempt among Yearman's fellow regulars.

Personally, Chernock was glad to have the training differential made clear. As far as he knew, this was the first joint Navy—State Security operation to be mounted, and he had taken careful note of his own service's inadequacies. He already knew his post-mission report was going to be scathing, and he intended to send it directly to Citizen Secretary Saint-Just's personal attention. If, in fact, it became necessary for SS units to deal with rebellious ships of the regular Navy, they were going to need either an enormous preponderance in firepower or far better training, and it was his duty to point that out to StateSec's commander.

In the meantime, however, Yearman had to get his mismatched command team into some sort of fighting trim, and he had driven them mercilessly while the ground force was assembled in Danak. He'd made considerable progress, although Chernock knew he was still far from satisfied, and he'd gone on drilling them on the voyage to Cerberus. Unfortunately, that trip was only forty-five light-years long, and the Roughnecks were fast ships for transports. The entire voyage required only eight days base-time, which gave Yearman less than six and a half subjective to get them whipped into shape. After five days of nonstop exercises and tactical problems, even his regulars were heartily sick and tired of it, and the StateSec officers hovered on the brink of rebellion. Yet even Citizen Captain Isler must realize how much they had improved, and Chernock's presence was enough to enforce at least a surface civility.

"I'll keep this brief," he said finally, his voice very level. "We represent a hastily assembled force many of whose perso