Echoes Of Honor

The other woman looked at her in hard-eyed silence for several more seconds, and then, suddenly, her eyebrows rose in an expression of shock.

"Wait. You said ‘Harrington.’ Are you Honor Harrington?" she demanded harshly, and it was Honor’s turn to blink in consternation.

"I was the last time I looked," she said cautiously. She looked past the newcomers at Mayhew, one eyebrow quirked, but the Grayson lieutenant only shook his head.

"My God," the woman muttered, then turned back to the man. He returned her stare without comment, then shrugged and raised both hands palm uppermost.

"May I ask how you happen to know my first name?" Honor asked after a moment, and the woman wheeled back around to face her.

"A couple of dozen Manty prisoners got dumped in my last camp just before the Black Legs sent me to Inferno," she said slowly, narrow eyes locked on Honor’s face. "They had a lot to say about you—if you’re really the Honor Harrington they were talking about. Said you took out a Peep battlecruiser with a heavy cruiser before the war even started, then ripped hell out of a Peep task force at someplace called Hancock. And they said—" her eyes darted to Nimitz "—that you had some strange kind of pet." She stopped and cocked her head aggressively. "That you?"

"Allowing for a little exaggeration in the telling, I’d say yes," Honor replied even more cautiously. It had never occurred to her that anyone on this planet had ever heard of her, and she was unprepared for the fierce, exultant enthusiasm her name seemed to have waked within the stern-faced blonde. "I wasn’t in command at Hancock—I was Admiral Sarnow’s flag captain—and I had a lot of help dealing with the battlecruiser. And Nimitz isn’t my ‘pet.’ But, yes. I think I’m the one you’re talking about."

"Damn," the woman whispered. "Damn! I sure as hell knew he wasn’t from any evolutionary line on this planet!" But then her exultation faded, and her face turned cold and bitter. "So the bastards got you, too," she half-snarled.

"Yes, and no," Honor replied. "As you may have noticed, we’re a little better equipped than you people seem to be." LaFollet had joined her while she and the other woman were speaking, and she handed him Nimitz and then took the lashed-together spears from him. She weighed them in her hand a moment, then passed them back to her armsman and tapped the butt of her holstered pulser, but she was unprepared for the other woman’s reaction.

"Oh my God, you hit one of them, did you?" she demanded in a tone of raw horror.

"‘Hit one of them’?" Honor repeated.

"Hit one of the supply shuttles," the other woman said harshly, and the horror in her face—and emotions—had turned accusing.

"No, we haven’t hit one of the supply shuttles," Honor replied.

"Oh, sure," the blonde said. "You found the guns growing wild in the woods!"

"No, we took these from the Peeps," Honor told her calmly. "But we took them before we ever hit atmosphere." Both newcomers were staring at her now, as if at a lunatic, and the living side of her mouth smiled grimly. "Did either of you happen to see a rather large explosion up there about five T-months ago?" she asked, and jerked her thumb at the sky, invisible beyond the tree branches.

"Yeah," the blonde said very slowly, drawing the word out, and her eyes were narrow again. "Matter of fact, we saw quite a few of ’em. Why?"

"Because that was us arriving," Honor said dryly. LaFollet shifted beside her, and she felt his unhappiness. He didn’t want her telling these strangers so much about them so quickly, but Honor only touched him on the shoulder. He stilled his fidgeting, and she gave him a brief smile. Unless she decided that she could trust these two—fully—then they would be returning to the hidden shuttles with her and her companions, at gunpoint if necessary. But for now, she had to convince them she was telling the truth, because if she didn’t, they would never trust her, which meant she would never be able to trust them.

"You?" the woman asked, brow furrowing in disbelief, and she nodded.

"Us. The Peeps captured us in the Adler System and turned us over to StateSec to ship out here. Their plans included hanging me on arrival, but some of my people had... other ideas."

"Ideas?" the blonde parroted, and Honor nodded again.

"Let’s just say that one of my chiefs has a way with computers. He got access to the ship’s net and took the entire system down, and in the confusion, the rest of my people broke me out of solitary confinement, seized control of a boat bay, stole us some transport, and blew the ship up as they left." She felt a fresh, wrenching stab of loss and grief for the people who had died making that possible, but she let none of it show in her face. Not now. Not until she had convinced these people that she was telling them the truth.

"And just how the hell did they do that?" the other woman asked in obvious skepticism, and Honor smiled crookedly at her.

"They demonstrated what happens when you bring up a pi

"My God! " she whispered. "But that—"

"Killed everyone on board," Honor finished for her grimly. "That’s right. We took out the entire ship... and no one dirtside knows we got out—and down—alive. With, as I said, somewhat better equipment than you seem to have."

"How do you know?" the man demanded, speaking for the first time. His speech was similar to his companion’s, but even more slurred and hard to follow, and he made an impatient gesture when Honor cocked her head at him. "How do you know they don’t know?" he amplified in his almost incomprehensible accent, speaking very slowly and with an obvious effort at clarity.

"Let’s just say we’ve been checking their mail," Honor replied.

"But that means—" The woman was staring at her, and then she wheeled back to her companion. "Henri, they’ve got a pi

"But—" Henri began, and then stopped dead. The two of them stared at one another, expressions utterly stu

"You do, don’t you?" the woman demanded. "You’ve got a pi

"Something like that," Honor replied, watching her carefully and privately astonished by how quickly the other woman had put things together. Of course, it must be obvious that if they’d gotten down without the Peeps knowing about it they had to at least have a lifeboat, but this woman had gotten past her disbelief and shock to put all the clues together far more rapidly than Honor would have believed was possible. Was that because her odd accent made her sound like some sort of untutored bumpkin from a hick planet whose schools couldn’t even teach their people to speak proper Standard English?

"But why are you—?" the blonde began, speaking almost absently, as if to herself. Then she stopped again. "Of course," she said very softly. "Of course. You’re looking for manpower, aren’t you, Commodore? And you figured Camp Inferno was the best place to recruit it?"

"Something like that," Honor repeated, astonished afresh and trying not to show it. She didn’t know how long this woman had been a prisoner, but captivity obviously hadn’t done a thing to slow down her mental processes.

"Well I will be dipped in shit," the other woman said almost prayerfully, and then stepped forward so quickly not even LaFollet had time to react. Honor felt her armsman flinch beside her, but the blonde only held out her right hand, and Honor tasted the wild, almost manic delight flaring through her.