Echoes Of Honor

"All right," she said finally, "but take it slow. And take some more weight off her so you can cut back on the VT. Let’s try not to kick up trash and FOD a turbine."

"Yes, Ma’am. That sounds like a real good idea," Tremaine replied, then gri

"Hey, the heck with Chief Barstow," Harkness growled over the com. "This here is my bird, Sir. She can look after Two."

"I stand corrected—or at least chastened," Tremaine said in a somewhat distracted tone, his hands flickering over his controls with the precision of an absent-minded concert pianist while his eyes never left his intended landing site.

The pilot in Honor wanted to help him, but she knew better than to try. Her single hand would make her slow and awkward, and it was better to let him handle the entire load rather than risk getting in his way.

The shuttle came in very slowly, gleaming in the moonlight, and the black shadow of the jungle reached out for it. Tremaine slid it forward, no more than half a dozen meters above the ground, and Honor watched with carefully hidden nervousness as foliage rippled and danced below them. Even with the reduction in downward thrust, there was a lot of small trash flying around down there, and foreign object damage to a turbine could have deadly consequences this close to the ground.

But the turbines continued their whining song of power, and Tremaine eased the shuttle carefully down and forward. The long fuselage slid in under the tree cover, and he fed in some side thrust, edging to port.

"We’re not going to be able to get as deep as we were at Site One, Ma’am," he observed through gritted teeth. His voice was still conversational, despite the sweat glistening on his taut face, and his hands moved the stick and thrust controls with smooth delicacy. "Best I can do is scrunch over as far as I can this way and let Gerry have the right side."

"I’ll go with your call, Scotty," Honor said softly, without commenting on the fact that he’d given himself by far the tougher landing spot. But he was a better natural pilot than Metcalf—as good as Honor herself, but with more recent practice and two hands—and he brought his shuttle another twenty meters to its left, then nodded to himself.

"Deploy gear, please, Ma’am," he said. That much she could do, one-handed or not, and she pulled the big handle. The landing legs deployed quickly and smoothly, and Tremaine let the shuttle sink slowly down onto them. There was one scary moment as the outboard starboard leg flexed alarmingly and a red light flashed on the panel, but assault shuttles were designed for rough field landings, and the computer controlling that leg adjusted quickly. The red light died, and Tremaine gradually reduced his counter-grav, watching his readouts carefully for several taut seconds. Then he exhaled explosively.

"We’re down, Ma’am," he a

"Aye, Sir," Harkness replied, and Honor reached across her body to pat Tremaine on the shoulder.

"That was good work, Scotty," she told him, and he smiled at her. Then she turned away to watch through her side window as Geraldine Metcalf brought Shuttle Two in on the far side of the opening. From here, it looked almost effortless, but Honor could imagine exactly what it felt like from inside that other cockpit. After all, she’d just experienced it herself.

"All right, people," she said as the other shuttle finally settled and its turbines died. "We’re going to have to work faster than we’d expected to get the nets up. Senior Chief O’Jorgenson?"

"Yes, Ma’am?" Senior Chief Tamara O’Jorgenson was a fellow Sphinxian who had been a senior environmental tech aboard Prince Adrian but also happened to be a fully qualified small craft gu

"You’ll man the dorsal turret while we get squared away, Senior Chief," Honor said.

"Aye, Ma’am."

"Very well, then." Honor hit the release on her own straps and stood. "Let’s be about it, people."

Chapter Eleven

It was almost dawn before they had the nets in place once more, and Honor was more nervous about the quality of their camouflage than she cared to show. The climate was definitely drier here, and the soil seemed to be less rich. There was far less undergrowth than the ferociously fecund four-canopy jungle in which they had originally landed had offered, and the trees, for the most part, tended to be smaller. It was much harder to snuggle the shuttles in under them, and there were fewer natural vines and lianas to complement the cammo nets. She knew McKeon was as unhappy about the situation as she was, and they’d already made plans for most of their people to spend the coming night weaving more natural elements into the nets, but for now they’d just have to hope the concealment was good enough.

"If things work out, maybe we should consider sending at least one of the shuttles back to Site One after all," she said quietly as the two of them sat under a wing and watched the sun come up. He glanced at her, and she shrugged, knowing that he would recognize her oblique apology for what it was.

"Maybe," he agreed after a moment. "I suppose we could use tight beam off one of the Peeps’ comsats to stay in touch without their noticing if we were careful. Bit risky, though."

She made a soft sound of agreement and leaned back against the seat cover Harkness and Andrew LaFollet had removed from the shuttle for her. Her energy levels still hadn’t come back up to her precapture standards, and she felt utterly wiped out.

"You shouldn’t have pushed yourself so hard," McKeon growled softly as Nimitz limped over to her and curled up on chest. She tucked her arm around the ’cat and closed her eyes wearily.

"Had to do my part. A CO has an example to set. I read that somewhere when I was at Saganami Island," she told McKeon, and he snorted with the fine fervor of an old friend.

"Sure you did. But while I realize you may not’ve noticed that you’re shy an arm, we have. So next time Fritz ‘suggests’ you take a break, you damned well take a break!"

"Is that an order?" she asked sleepily, feeling Nimitz’s purr blending into her bones even as his love echoed soothingly about the corners of her soul, and McKeon snorted again, albeit with slightly less panache.

"Actually, I think it is," he said after a moment. "We’re both commodores now, after all. You told me so yourself, even if Their Lordships haven’t gotten around to making it official. I’ve noticed that they seem to have lost my address over the last few months." Honor snorted, and he gri

"Actually, I’d try very hard not to hurt you, Sir," Major LaFollet called softly from where he sat atop the wing, keeping watch over his Steadholder.

"There, see?" Honor said even more sleepily. "Andrew’ll stop you."

"Oh, I didn’t say that, My Lady!" LaFollet chuckled. "I meant I’d try not to hurt him while I helped him make you take a break."

"Traitor!" Honor murmured, right cheek dimpling with a smile that never touched the left side of her mouth at all, and then she drifted off to sleep.

It was not only drier here, it was also hotter. They were squarely in the middle of the continent, far away from the moderating influence of the oceans, and the aptly named Camp Inferno was, indeed, directly on the equator. It was as well that Nimitz had shed his winter down before they moved, yet even so, he and Honor were driven to retreat into one of the shuttles by noon.

But at least no overflying Peeps seemed to have spotted them, and by late afternoon McKeon, Marchant, and Metcalf had organized work parties to bring in native greenery to supplement the cover of the cammo nets. While they did that, Harkness, Barstow, and Tremaine got all the thermal convertors on-line, and the temperatures in the shuttles dropped dramatically as extra power began to augment their battery backups.