Toll of Honor

Book : Expanded Honor

by David Weber

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera; Space Marines

Synopsis

A NEW SOLO NOVEL IN DAVID WEBER'S NYT BEST-SELLING HONORVERSE

“It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength.” —Subhas Chandra Bose

Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo has come home from the Battle of Hancock station wounded in both body and spirit. She will need months to regenerate her lost leg, but how long will it take to heal her heart?

She’s come home to find that her wounds, her ship’s brutal damage, the deaths of so many friends, were the fault of an arrogant, aristocratic coward who broke and ran in the face of the enemy. Who left her ship to pay the price for his craven desertion under fire. And whose powerful political allies are determined to protect and preserve him at any price.

They have held hostage the declaration of war until Lord Pavel Young escaped the consequences of his cowardice. They didn’t care what it cost the Navy. They didn’t care what it cost the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their tactics have cost the Royal Navy the priceless initiative as revolution and military purges wrack the People’s Republic of Haven, and that lost window of opportunity will cost the Star Kingdom seventeen years of bloody warfare and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Now Young is free to seek vengeance on the people he feels have “wronged” him. People like Paul Tankersley and Honor Harrington. Paid duelists, smear tactics, hired assassins in public restaurants . . . nothing is beneath Pavel Young. But Captain Harrington can look after herself, and Pavel Young is about to face the fury of the woman the newsies call the “Salamander.” Yet who will save the Star Kingdom from the repercussions of his actions?

Women and men like Brandy Bolgeo are about to pay the toll for the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s honor.

Release date: April 2, 2024

Publisher: Baen

Print pages: 528

Sample

BOOK ONE

 

HMS Pasteur

Manticore Planetary Orbit

Manticore Binary System

March 17, 1905 PD

 

“how you doing there, Lieutenant?”

Brandy Bolgeo turned her head on the pillow and smiled. It was a worn, crooked smile, and she raised the cast on her right hand and forearm.

“I’ve been better, actually,” she told the sick berth attendant.

“I hear that.”

The petty officer tapped the display on the end of Brandy’s bunk to check her chart, then nodded in satisfaction.

“I expect you’re tired of hearing this, Ma’am,” he said, “but you really are going to be fine. It’ll take a while, but they do good work at Bassingford.”

“I know.” Brandy nodded. “They put my dad back together after that explosion on Vulcan in ’97. Of course, he still had most of his original parts, except for one hand. They were busted up, but he still had them.”

She looked down at the flat sheet covering the space her right leg should have occupied and grimaced.

“Hey, your chart says regen will work fine in your case!” the SBA said.

“But I’m going to be down with this for months.” Brandy’s grimace turned bitter. “This isn’t the best time for any of us to take a vacation, PO!”

“Getting yourself put back together is not a ‘vacation,’ Ma’am.” The SBA’s tone was sterner. “It’s called doing your job. And you and your people damn well earned the right to take however long it takes.”

Brandy’s mouth tightened as memories of all the shipmates who’d never have the chance to put themselves “back together” flowed through her. HMS Cassandra had been brutally hit in what the newsies had dubbed the Battle of Hancock Station. Not that its name mattered a single solitary damn to anyone—like Brandy—who’d survived it. Almost a third of her crewmates aboard Cassandra hadn’t. In fact, it was a miracle the battlecruiser herself had escaped destruction, and a quarter of her survivors—like Brandy herself—had been badly wounded. If Admiral Danislav had arrived with Battle Squadron 18’s dreadnoughts even twenty minutes later than he actually had . . . 

“You’re probably right,” she said after a moment. “I wish it wasn’t going to take so long, but you’re probably right.”

“I am right,” the SBA corrected her firmly, then smiled. “But once they get you back up on your feet—plural—do me one favor, Ma’am.”

“And what would that be, PO?”

“Well, I think we do pretty good work here aboard the Louie, and we’re always glad to be there when you need us, but we do try to discourage repeat customers. So try real hard not to end up in the body shop again, okay?”

“I think you can safely assume that’s on my list of priorities.” Brandy smiled back, more naturally. “This is probably something somebody should only do once.”

“Actually, even if it would leave me with nothing to do, I’d prefer that people never did it.” The SBA patted her gently on her good shoulder. “If I don’t see you again before they transfer you, it’s been an honor taking care of you and everyone else from Hancock. We’re proud of you, Ma’am.”

Brandy nodded, although she felt uncomfortable every time someone told her that. She supposed they had a point, and she knew they were sincere, but it still felt . . . wrong. Like she was stealing somehow from the men and women who would never come home from the Hancock System. Logically, she knew that was stupid—or at least irrational. But logic wasn’t a lot of help just now.

The SBA headed on along the ward, and Brandy heard him checking in with his other patients. The enormous hospital ship had gathered in all of the Fifth Battlecruiser Squadron’s wounded—including Admiral Sarnow, its commanding officer—immediately after the engagement, and they were damned lucky she’d been attached to Danislav’s command. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been, but given the level of tension with the People’s Republic and Hancock Station’s exposed position,

the Admiralty had realized the odds that Danislav’s squadron was sailing straight into battle were high, and Hancock’s medical facilities were rudimentary, at best.

At that, though, the station’s facilities had been better than the ones on Cassandra. After the battle, at least. Brandy’s memories of the final stages of the engagement and its immediate aftermath were thankfully vague, but she remembered the battlecruiser’s skinsuited sick berth attendants desperately sealing her into the emergency life-support pod as sick bay lost pressure. And she vaguely recalled the way the ship had lurched as laserhead after laserhead pounded her even as Brandy slithered down the slope into unconsciousness and wondered if she’d ever wake up again.

It was hard to believe that had happened barely ten days ago, but Pasteur had headed back to the Manticore Binary System within forty-six hours of the battle. Some of the damaged warships had left even before that. Pasteur had been delayed until search and rescue operations were officially completed, but the cripples like Cassandra—far too badly shot up to be combat effective but still capable of movement under their own power—had been sent directly home. Some of them were probably beyond repair, but those which could be repaired would be needed—desperately—as quickly as they could be returned to service.

Too bad battlecruisers don’t regenerate, she thought. The yard dogs on Hephaestus and Vulcan are good, but they’re not miracle workers. Cassie snuck off before I could get a good look at her, but just from the damage she’d taken before I got clipped, she’s going to be down for months. Probably almost as many as me.

She closed her eyes, remembering her own terror amidst the roaring inferno in the ship’s environmental spaces. Remembering how the ship lurched again and again as she fought her way back through the passages to her duty station in Damage Control Central. The lurid schematics, blazing bloodred with battle damage, when she got there at last. Remembering the chatter over the com. The staccato damage reports. The high-pitched stress in those voices. The voices that chopped off in mid-syllable as they took still more hits.

And then the moment the blackness fell and everything just . . . stopped.

They try to get us ready for it. They really do. That’s what the Last View is all about. But Commandant Vickers was right. They can’t really prepare us. Nobody could.

But at least she’d survived, she told herself. And the SBA was right. Bassingford Medical Center did do good work.

Maybe by the time they got done with her, she’d actually be ready to return to duty.

At the moment, she doubted it.

* * *

“I don’t want

you wearing him out, Sir.”

The stern voice penetrated Mark Sarnow’s semi-doze, and he opened his eyes. He also found himself trying not to smile, despite all the drugs floating through his system, as he saw the barrel-chested man trying to tiptoe into the compartment.

Sir Thomas Caparelli hadn’t been designed by nature to tiptoe anywhere, Sarnow thought. As a midshipman, he’d collected at least three broken noses, two concussions, a broken shoulder, and an awesome total of yellow—and red—cards on the soccer pitches of Saganami Island, and in some ways, he’d changed very little over the ensuing decades. His weight lifter’s torso and sprinter’s legs were an only too accurate reflection of his preference for going through obstacles, rather than around them, and he looked ridiculous trying to sneak into an invalid’s sickroom.

He was also the Royal Manticoran Navy’s First Space Lord, however, and Sarnow reached for the controls to raise his bed into a sitting position.

Caparelli opened his mouth, probably to tell him to stay right where he was, but then the First Space Lord shook his head.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said instead as the powered bed brought Sarnow upright. “And I don’t think you’re supposed to be sitting up yet.”

“Probably not, Sir,” Sarnow agreed, but he made no effort to lie back flat again, and Caparelli snorted.

Sarnow’s tenor was weaker and hoarser than it ought to have been, the First Space Lord reflected. But for a man who’d lost both legs below the knee, broken all but one of his ribs, and had somewhere around a quarter kilo of splinters from his command chair’s armored shell removed from his back, the admiral actually sounded far better than he’d anticipated.

“I’m not going to stay long,” he said. “For one thing, your doctors would murder me if I did! For another, they’re moving you dirtside in a couple of hours, so they’ll need me out of your hair by then. I wanted a few words before they haul you off to Bassingford, though.”

“Of course, Sir. What can I do for you?”

“The first thing you can do is not wear yourself out trying to do anything for me. Just listen.”

Sarnow nodded, and Caparelli flashed a brief smile. Then his expression sobered.

“First, you and your people did magnificently,” he said. “I know right now what you’re feeling most is how badly you got hammered and how many of those people of yours you lost, but what you—and they—did to the Peeps was—Well, it was damned amazing, is what it was. We never expected them to hit you that quickly, and given Admiral Parks’ dispositions—”

He shrugged, and Sarnow nodded in understanding. There were limits to how severely the First Space Lord would permit himself to criticize a station's

 official commander, especially before the full reports on something like Hancock were in and analyzed. Sarnow suspected a lot of other flag officers would be less reticent, yet the truth was that in his own opinion, the wisdom of Sir Yancey Parks’ response to the Admiralty war warning could have been argued either way. It wasn’t the one he would have chosen. In fact, it wasn’t the one for which he’d argued. But given what Parks had known at the time, it hadn’t been totally unreasonable. And in the aftermath, Parks had moved with commendable speed to counterattack and crush the Peeps’ forward base in the Seaford System from which the attack had come.

It was unlikely that would absolve him in the Navy’s eyes for what had almost happened—hell, what had happened—in Hancock, but at least he’d moved swiftly to claim the prize for which Sarnow’s squadron had paid.

“What you may not have heard yet,” Caparelli continued, “is that White Haven hammered Parnell in Yeltsin even harder than the Peeps hammered you in Seaford. They got out with almost half their fleet, but White Haven shot hell out of them before Parnell could disengage. From the tac data, it looks like at least a third of his survivors will be in the yards for months, if not longer. Between the two of you, you gave us a pair of overwhelming victories in the opening engagements. With a little luck, we’ll be able to ride that while they’re still off balance. At the moment, White Haven’s moving from Yeltsin against Mendoza. Hopefully, he’ll be able to take out Chelsea before they can redeploy, as well.”

“That’s good, Milord.” Sarnow nodded. His voice was still weak, but satisfaction flickered in his green eyes.

“Well, I’m afraid we don’t have an official declaration of war yet.” Caparelli shrugged. “We should—Parliament should’ve given it to us the day word of Hancock hit Landing—but apparently politics are still politics.” He grimaced with the sour disgust of someone whose position forced him to spend far too much time dealing with the realities of the Star Kingdom’s political establishment. “I think we’ll probably get it before much longer, though. Assuming the Liberals get their thumbs out, anyway.” The First Space Lord’s nostrils flared. “You may not believe it, but some of them are still arguing for ‘the path of sanity’ and ‘not leaping to any hasty conclusions until we have all the information we need before we make any irrevocable decisions’ despite the fact that the Peeps obviously shot first!”

From his tone, the First Space Lord was quoting someone exactly. In fact, Sarnow was pretty sure he could have guessed which of Countess New Kiev’s Liberal Party peers had made the remarks. That second one, about “hasty conclusions,” had to have come from the Earl of Dabney. The man was a pompous, sanctimonious, overprivileged windbag whose invincible confidence in his own opinions made him dangerous, in Sarnow’s opinion. His dogged, unremitting opposition to every single year’s Naval Estimates for the past fifteen T-years, despite the looming menace of the People’s Republic of Haven, was a case in point.

On the other hand, unlike some other members of the House of Lords, like Baron High

Ridge, say . . . 

“Fair’s fair, Sir,” he said. “Don’t say I agree with them, but I think a lot of them—the Liberals, I mean—are sincere.”

“I’m prepared to admit most of them are sincere,” Caparelli replied. “Not all of them, though. Especially not in the Lords. Given the company they keep there, honesty isn’t all that high on their list. And even granting they really believe what they’re spouting on the House floor, that just means they’ve put their heads very sincerely up their asses.”

Sarnow chuckled, then winced, and Caparelli shook his head apologetically.

“Sorry! I don’t imagine laughing does your gizzards a lot of good just now, Mark. Anyway, it won’t hurt anything if they burn another couple of weeks before they vote out the formal declaration.” He shrugged. “Given message transit times and deployment speeds, it’ll be a while before we’re ready for anything beyond the immediate counterstrikes. I’ve already authorized Riposte Gamma, and that’s really about as far as we can go until we have better intel on what the hell the Peeps are going to do, now that their initial offensives got shot to hell.”

Sarnow nodded again. The Royal Manticoran Navy believed in being both prepared and thorough when it came to defending the Star Kingdom’s home star system and commerce from attack. As part of its thoroughness, it had dutifully considered the possibility of an attack by any hypothetical star nation, but it had always recognized that the only logical “hypothetical aggressor” was the People’s Republic of Haven, and it had planned accordingly. The RMN had long recognized that the People’s Republic would almost inevitably fire the first shot in the war against which both star nations had prepared for the last twenty T-years or so. Longer than that from Manticore’s perspective; the RMN’s buildup had actually begun well over half a T-century earlier, under Samantha II, ten T-years before Roger III came to the throne in 1857 PD, and it had only accelerated after Roger’s death in 1883. Sixty T-years was a long time to think about something, so even though the Admiralty had always anticipated that the Peeps would shoot first, they’d given quite a lot of attention to considering just what the Star Kingdom might do in the event that Manticore—unlike any of the People’s Navy’s previous targets—survived that opening shot and got to shoot back.

The result was Case Riposte, a war plan whose options covered every imaginable set of circumstances. Riposte Gamma was, in fact, a far more optimistic variant than most Navy analysts had ever believed would be possible. If Caparelli had authorized Gamma, Admiral White Haven must have inflicted truly catastrophic damage on the People’s Navy when he ambushed it at Yeltsin’s Star.

“All right, I should get the hell out of here so they can prep you for transport,” the First Space Lord said now. “The real reason I came is that I know that if I were the one in that bed after how brilliantly my people

had performed, I’d want to know what was happening. Especially”—Caparelli smiled warmly—“because the way they performed—the way all of you performed—is what’s put us in a position to take the war to the enemy and kick the ever-loving shit out of him. Thank you. You did us all proud.”

He held Sarnow’s eyes until the admiral nodded in acknowledgment. Then he nodded back, waved one hand, and stepped back out of the compartment.

 

Bassingford Medical Center

City of Landing

Planet Manticore

Manticore Binary System

March 20, 1905

 

“got a visitor, Lieutenant!”

Brandy Bolgeo looked up from her book reader as Chief Petty Officer Jason Bates poked his head in through her hospital room’s open door.

“It wouldn’t happen to be a surly, disreputable-looking, overweight fellow going bald on top, who was once a guest in your establishment himself, would it?” she asked the senior floor nurse in a suspicious tone, and Bates chuckled.

“Actually, it is. But he’s got a really nice lady with him. She might be able to make him behave.”

“Not if it’s who I’m pretty sure it is,” Brandy said mournfully, setting the reader on her bedside table. “Still, I’m braced now, so I guess you’d better let him come in.”

“You really are brave, Lieutenant,” Bates said in suitably awed tones, then stepped aside.

“‘Disreputable,’ is it?” the round-faced, bearded man demanded as he walked into the room. “Disreputable. That’s the best you could come up with after I spent an entire lifetime racking up black marks?”

“You did not spend ‘an entire lifetime’ racking up black marks,” the dark-haired woman beside him said severely. “You didn’t even join the Navy until you were twenty-three, Timmy! I realize you spent most of those years getting into trouble as a civilian, but the Navy didn’t get a chance to whack you until you put the uniform on.”

“I started as soon as I could,” Senior Chief Petty Officer (retired) Timothy Bolgeo pointed out in an affronted tone. “And I certainly did my best to make up for all that lost civilian time! I think I collected close enough to a lifetime’s worth to be entitled to a little poetic license!”

“Ha! That’s about the only poetic thing about you,” Linda Bolgeo shot back. “Although,” she added with a judicious air, “they seemed to feel obligated to make up for all that lost time, too, once they did get a chance to start whacking you.”

“I rest my case,” Tim said triumphantly as they crossed to the bed. Then he leaned in to hug Brandy, and she opened her arms wide. His own arms squeezed tight—tightly enough to belie the humor in his voice—and he held her close for several seconds before he inhaled deeply and stood back. He stood there, still looking down at her, until Linda gave him a pointed, none-too-gentle elbow jab. Then he twitched and moved aside with an apologetic chuckle. Linda snorted and leaned over to hug their daughter, as well, and Brandy’s eyes burned as they embraced tightly.

“Sit. Sit!” she commanded then, waving at the hospital room’s chairs with the lightweight splint which had replaced the cast on her right hand while her left hand swiped as unobtrusively as possible (which wasn’t very) at her tears.

“So bossy!” her father replied, smiling at her as he took his wife’s hand and the two of them settled obediently.

“How are you feeling, honey?” Linda asked, her expression serious, and Brandy shrugged.

“Honestly, I don’t feel all that bad, Mom. I’d a lot rather not be here, of course, but aside from a little discomfort in the wrist from the quick-heal”—she waved her splint again—“nothing’s actively hurting at the moment. My leg stump’s starting to itch from the prep treatments, but I knew that was going to happen. Somebody”—she looked pointedly at her father—“spent an awful lot of time complaining about itching when he was checked in here.”

“I have no idea who you could possibly be talking about,” Tim said.

“You could try to look at least a little sincere when you lie, Timmy,” Linda said.

“Ah, but that’s part of my devious plan,” he told her. “If I lie badly most of the time, it’s a lot easier to sneak a lie through by lying well when I really

need to.”

“Yeah, sure.” Brandy smiled at her father, and he smiled back, but she recognized the pain behind that smile. It didn’t matter that she was almost thirty T-years old. What mattered was that he saw his little girl in that hospital bed.

“So, the docs all told us you really are doing well,” Linda said now. “But you know you’re going to be sidelined for quite a while, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Brandy sighed. “The quick-heal’s already taken care of most of the soft tissue injuries, except for the cut in my side. Even that’s a lot better than it was, though. Of course, it’s slower on bone repairs. Which is why I’m still stuck with this.” She tapped the splint with her left index finger. “Which wouldn’t be such a pain if I weren’t so right-handed.” She rolled her eyes. “And they only started regen prep a couple of days ago. They say my profile’s good, but it looks like I’m not going to respond quite as well as you did, Dad. And there’s the minor fact that they have to grow me almost an entire new leg instead of just a hand I left lying around somewhere. They’re talking about two months here in Bassingford—maybe even three. And then probably out-patient regen for at least another couple of months. So I’m afraid it looks like ‘sidelined quite a while’ is putting it mildly.”

“You got that right, baby girl,” Tim told her, seriously. “And when they do let you out, you’re coming straight home to Liberty Crossing.”

“They want me to rehab here in Bassingford’s PT center, Dad, and—”

“‘They’ can want whatever they want,” he said flatly. “What matters is what your mother and I want. We did all that work on the house while I rehabbed; Doc Whalen got all trained up working with me; and on top of that, your survivor’s leave doesn’t officially start until they certify your recovery and rehab.” He raised his eyebrows. “I hope you weren’t thinking you’d spend all that time anywhere except back home?”

Brandy looked at him, then shook her head.

“You do remember, Daddy, that I’m a commissioned Queen’s officer? Which means I get to make at least a few decisions?”

“You can make all the decisions you want in the Service,” he said. “But I’m not in the Service anymore, am I?” He grinned wickedly.

“No. No, you’re not,” Brandy acknowledged with a smile of her own. But it was a bittersweet smile, because she fully recognized the regret hiding behind her father’s grin. Just as she knew exactly why he felt it . . . and why he’d left the Navy, anyway.

Senior Chief Bolgeo’s twenty-seven-T-year Navy career had been a thing of legend, at least among his fellow noncoms. His extraordinary competence had been matched only by the occasionally epic occasions upon which he’d irritated officers who didn’t measure up to his own standards. Those had made his career . . . interesting. Well, those and the ample collection of black marks, reprimands, and occasional demotions produced by his proclivity for hosting

and participating in games of chance, especially those which revolved around playing cards. His passion was for Spades, but as long as cards were involved somewhere . . . 

He’d been the sort of noncom any engineering officer would have killed to get, and his demotions had never lasted long. They had not, alas, been quite as infrequent as they might have been, however, because he’d also possessed an unequaled talent for pissing off supply officers, members of the shore patrol, and anyone else unfortunate enough to get in his way when he was locked in on a given project. But he’d loved his job, he’d loved the Navy, and as a little girl she’d known he would be a lifer.

That had been before the explosion aboard Her Majesty’s Space Station Vulcan almost ten T-years ago, though. Brandy had been in her final year of high school when that happened, and she still remembered her mother’s face when Tim’s CO screened personally to tell her what had happened. And how bad it was.

Only two other members of SCPO Bolgeo’s fifteen-man work party had survived, and although the disaster hadn’t been his fault—the propellant explosion in the boat bay fueling system hadn’t had a single thing to do with the power system his people were working on—he’d taken it hard. Hard enough that he’d sent in his papers when they finally let him out of the hospital after they finished regenerating the left hand he’d lost dragging one of those survivors out of the wreckage.

He hadn’t actually left the Navy, though. As he was fond of pointing out, Bolgeos had served the Royal Manticoran Navy, one way or another, for over three hundred T-years, and he’d become a civilian—and far better paid—“double-dipper” with the Hauptman Cartel. He was currently a senior project manager for Hauptman’s Naval Services Division, and while Brandy knew he missed his own Navy career (although he would have died before admitting it), she also knew he took intense satisfaction from his current employment.

And the Navy had let him put the uniform back on long enough to give his new-minted ensign daughter her first hand salute when she graduated from Saganami Island.

“So,” he said now, “since I am no longer a slave of the Service, bound to abject obedience to every petty commissioned tyrant, you can’t give me orders, even if you were to be so drunk with power you made the attempt.”

“I’m not so sure you can give me orders anymore, either, Daddy.”

“Oh, I won’t have to. I will shamelessly enlist your mother in my cause. And then you’re toast.”

“Dirty pool, Daddy!”

“That’s because I was a sneaky, devious old senior chief rather than a guileless and innocent junior officer such as yourself.”

“Oh, is that what it is? I always wondered.”

“And now you don’t have to.”

“Would you two please stop it?” Linda Bolgeo asked. Brandy looked at her, and she

shook her head. “They won’t let us stay forever. In fact, they told us you have a regen treatment scheduled in less than an hour, Brandy. So could you two stop teasing each other long enough for us to have an actual visit?”

“Oh, I imagine we could,” Brandy agreed.

“You’re right, Linda.”

Tim patted his wife on the knee. Then he looked back at his daughter, and his expression turned more serious.

“You wouldn’t know this yet, Brandy, but Hauptman Navy’s been clearing repair slips to handle some of the damaged units coming in. Cassandra’s one of them.”

Brandy’s eyes darkened, and he nodded.

“I’ve got the seniority, now, honey. I put in for supervision on her repairs, and they gave her to me.”

“I’m—” Brandy had to pause and clear her throat. “I’m glad she’s in such good hands.”

“Well, what kind of father doesn’t look after his daughter’s ride?” Tim flashed her a smile. It was brief. “I’ve walked the ship,” he continued then. “I’ve seen what happened to Damage Control.” For just a moment, his face might have been sculpted from iron. “Baby girl, I don’t know how in God’s name you got out of there alive. I really, truly don’t. But I’ve spent so much time on my knees since I saw that compartment—”

His voice cracked, broke, and the iron crumbled. Brandy felt her own eyes burn and opened her arms once more. He crossed to the bed in a single stride, and she wrapped her left arm around him while she held her right out to Linda. An instant later, her mother was burrowed into the same embrace, and she pressed her face into their shoulders.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” she whispered. “It’s okay. I’m gonna be fine!”

“I know that,” he said. He straightened and cleared his throat. “Really, I do. But I’m a dad and your mom’s a mom, and you’re our daughter, and we came way too close to losing you. And that’s why you’re damned well coming home to Liberty Crossing when they let you out of this healing palace! You’re not going back out to be shot at again before we have a chance to love on you properly.”

“Okay,” she said with a wavery smile. “Okay, you win.”

“Always knew you took after your mom where the smarts were concerned.”

“Mom, I’m not positive that’s a compliment to either of us.”

“The heck it isn’t!” Tim looked at her quizzically. “Why do you think I’ve always called her ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed in Liberty Crossing’?”

“Because you’re smarter

than you look?” Brandy suggested with a more natural smile.

“And just how hard would that be?” her mother asked with a laugh, reaching out to lay one palm against the side of Tim’s face.

“Hey, I’m a Bolgeo, and Bolgeo males always face a . . . somewhat steeper intellectual challenge than other people. But we almost always rise to it. Why, the very first Manticoran Bolgeo was proof of that!”

“Oh, God!” Linda rolled her eyes. “You’re not going to trot that out again, Timmy?”

“It’s a critical piece of our family history!” Tim raised his nose with a sniff. Then he cocked his head. “And, actually, considering BatCruRon Five’s flag captain, it’s almost part of the same tradition!”

Brandy shook her head, but this time, she had to admit her father might have a point. Maybe only a tiny one, but a point.

The Bolgeo Clan was one of the Star Kingdom’s larger yeoman families. It boasted thriving branches on both Gryphon and Sphinx, it had contributed solidly, in its own modest way, to building the Star Kingdom’s prosperity, and—counting her—there were currently over a dozen Bolgeos, commissioned and enlisted, on active duty in Her Majesty’s Navy. But her very first Manticoran ancestor had come with what might have been conservatively described as a checkered past. When Dr. Tennessee Bolgeo immigrated to the Star Kingdom in 1521, almost four T-centuries ago, he hadn’t meant to stay at all. In fact, he’d come for the express purpose of capturing specimens of the newly discovered Sphinx treecats and then smuggling them off-planet for off-world exotic animal dealers when he left.

Like many who’d come after him, he’d discovered there were safer things to attempt to trap, and he’d very nearly ended up dead when the treecat clan whose members he’d been stalking goaded a hexapuma into attacking him. In fact, he would have been killed, if a fourteen-year-old girl hadn’t just happened to be present to shoot and kill the hexapuma, instead.

After which she’d held him at gunpoint until the Sphinx Forestry Service arrived to take him into custody.

That moment had been something of an epiphany for Dr Bolgeo, and when the Crown indicted him for poaching and conspiracy to smuggle exotic animals off-planet (the ’cats’ sentience hadn’t yet been acknowledged, so at least they hadn’t charged him with kidnapping), he pled guilty without a whimper and asked for community service. They’d still given him a couple of T-years of jail time, but then he’d had another eight T-years of supervised probation during which he had, indeed, done community service. In fact, he’d put his genuine, not inconsiderable skills as a xenobiologist to good use and become a consultant to the Sphinx Forestry Service, working specifically (at his own request) with treecats. The ’cats had forgiven him. In fact, he’d become a frequent visitor with Bright Water Clan, and an elderly Tennessee Bolgeo had emerged from his well-earned retirement as one of the expert witnesses who’d testified in support of the Ninth Amendment when it was finally drafted forty T-years later.

And he’d also become

a close personal friend of that fourteen-year-old girl . . . whose name had been Stephanie Harrington.

Brandy hadn’t really thought about that when Cassandra was assigned to BatCruRon 5, but she’d thought about it since. And she’d come to the conclusion that the near-pine-cone didn’t fall far from the tree where Harringtons were concerned.

Which might just be true where Bolgeos are concerned, too, now that I think about it, she reflected, gazing at her father. He even looked like the handful of old-style holopics of Tennessee Bolgeo.

“You know, I have to say I think Dame Stephanie would’ve been pretty darned proud of Dame Honor,” she said, speaking her thoughts out loud.

“Damn straight.” Tim Bolgeo’s expression was sober and he nodded sharply. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’m hearing about that battle.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Brandy looked at him intently. Her father might have retired from the Navy, but he’d been a member in good standing of the senior chiefs’ mess, and he still had better sources in the Service than anyone else she knew.

“Well, the official report’s not out yet,” he said. “Won’t be for a while. But if a couple of people who screened me when they heard about how hard you’d been hit at Hancock are right, it’s gonna be a shitstorm when it hits the ’faxes.”

“Language, Tim,” Linda said. But she said it in a resigned I-know-it’s-futile-but-I-won’t-give-up-the-fight sort of tone, and Brandy’s lips twitched despite her father’s expression.

“Why?” she asked. “We did exactly what we were there to do. Oh, we were supposed to scatter and run for it if the Peeps kept coming, but Captain Quinlan briefed all of his officers on the ops plan. The main thing was to draw them away from the station and over the minefield, not give them a stand-up fight, of course. No way we could’ve gone toe-to-toe with wallers! And I’ll admit I expected the order to go ahead and scatter when the mines didn’t stop them. But as soon as Captain Quinlan came up on the com to tell us Admiral Danislav had dropped out of hyper, I knew Admiral Sarnow wouldn’t give it. All of us knew he wouldn’t. Not when he realized he could lead them into a trap if he didn’t scatter!”

“Really?” Tim looked at her. “You know Nike got hit? That Sarnow’s two floors up from your room?”

“Yeah.” Brandy nodded. “That happened . . . maybe a minute or two before the Cassie got clobbered.”

“It also happened before you reached the scatter point.”

“Wait.” Brandy’s eyes narrowed. “You’re saying Admiral Sarnow didn’t make the call for us to stay concentrated? Keep sucking the Peeps in?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, honey.” Tim nodded. “And according to my sources, neither did Captain Rubenstein, the only battlecruiser division CO still on his feet. It was Harrington.”

“Dame Honor?” Brandy’s eyebrows rose.

“Yep. The most junior battlecruiser captain left. She’s the one who decided not to break and run. And I have to say I’ve got mixed feelings about that. She’s the reason the battle was such a disaster for the Peeps,

 but she’s also the one who kept you guys concentrated until my one and only daughter damned near got herself killed. On balance, I approve. I’m not so sure everybody else will. In fact, from what I’m hearing, some people are already bitching that she should’ve passed command to Rubenstein when Sarnow went down. That it wasn’t her job to make that decision.”

“But she was his flag captain,” Brandy said. “If anybody in the entire task group knew what the Admiral was thinking, it was her!”

“I didn’t say she was wrong,” Tim said, cocking his head at her as he heard the sharp edge in her voice.

“Sorry, Dad.” Brandy shook her head quickly. “It’s just—I didn’t get to actually meet her, but Janet did,” she said, and Tim nodded in understanding. Lieutenant Janet Briscoe had been one of her closest friends since Saganami Island, and she’d also been HMS Cassandra’s assistant tactical officer during the battle. “You know Janet’s not the kind to impress easily, but Dame Honor pulled it off!”

“Can’t say that surprises me, given Harrington’s reputation. I served on Basilisk Station before she moved in and straightened out that rolling cluster—”

He glanced at his wife from the corner of one eye.

“Before she restored order, there, I mean,” he said instead, after only the briefest pause. “And Petros Gianakis was an electronics tech in Fearless when she went up against a battlecruiser with a heavy cruiser at Yeltsin. Far as he’s concerned, the only reason she doesn’t walk across the Tannerman Ocean for light exercise is that she doesn’t like wet feet!”

Brandy chuckled at her father’s expression, but she also nodded.

“I’d say that sums up Janet’s opinion of her, too.”

“Well, there’ll still be hell to pay, if what I’m hearing is accurate,” Tim said much more seriously. “You know the real reason you got hit so hard? The real reason your mother and I damned near lost you?”

“Dad, it could’ve happened to anybody, and—”

“The reason it happened to you, sweetheart, is because a fucking coward panicked and ran.”

Brandy stiffened in astonishment. But then she realized her mother hadn’t even tried to correct her father’s language this time. In fact, Linda Bolgeo’s expression was a mirror of her husband’s.

“What are you talking about?” she asked slowly.

“Your primary screening unit was CruRon Seventeen, right?” Tim raised an eyebrow, and Brandy nodded. “Well, Commodore Van Slyke was already dead by the time Danislav arrived. So command devolved on Captain Young. Captain Lord Pavel Young. And his ship took a hit—one fucking hit. And he ordered his squadron to scatter without

orders from the Flag. They pulled out, Brandy. They pulled out; they opened a hole for the missiles that damned near killed your entire ship. And when Captain Harrington ordered him back into formation, the worthless piece of shit went right on running. The rest of his ships returned, which is probably the only reason Cassandra wasn’t destroyed outright, but he and Warlock just kept running. And the Peeps’ fire ignored him, because one heavy cruiser with a coward for a captain was worth a whole lot less than the rest of your task group.”

Brandy’s good hand rose to her lips, covering her mouth, and her tears blurred her vision as her parents looked unflinchingly back at her.

“Like I say,” Tim continued after a moment, “the official after-action report hasn’t been issued yet, and I doubt it will be for a while. Given what I’m hearing, Admiral Parks is going to have to convene a formal board of inquiry into what happened before he can issue one, and he won’t be able to do that till he gets back to Hancock from Seaford and gets a chance to assemble all the witnesses. That’s gonna take a lot longer than anybody likes, and even after he can, they are for damned sure gonna take the time to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s on this one, because I know the Navy. If they don’t hammer that worthless SOB for this, the Service will never forgive the Admiralty. And if they don’t have an airtight case, with every single thing nailed down, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure for a whitewash instead.”

“What?!” Brandy looked at him incredulously, and he snorted harshly.

“Young’s the son—and heir—of an earl, Brandy. You’re from Gryphon. What do you think’ll happen if his ‘noble’ father finds out the JAG intends to file charges?”

“A ‘shitstorm,’ I think you said,” Brandy replied after a moment. “And you’re right; they’ll pull out all the stops to save him. But if that is what happened, they have to try him. I don’t care whose son he is. And if they convict him, they damned well have to shoot him!”

She heard the raw fury in her own voice, and her father nodded again. ...