Honor Harrington (№1) - On Basilisk Station

And so Winton and his surviving fellows had been able not only to recruit the reinforcements they needed but to pay those colonists' passage to their new and distant homes, if necessary. Yet, because they were concerned about retaining political control in the face of such an influx of newcomers, the survivors of the original expedition and their children had adopted a new constitution, converting their colony from one ruled by an elective board of directors into the Star Kingdom of Manticore under Roger I, first monarch of the House of Winton.

The Manticore Colony, Ltd.'s, initial shareholders had received vast tracts of land and/or mineral rights on the system's planets, in direct proportion to their original capital contributions. The new constitution transformed them into an hereditary aristocracy, but it wasn't a closed nobility, for even vaster tracts had remained unclaimed. The new colonists who could pay their own passage received the equivalent of its cost in land credits on their arrival, and those who could contribute more than the cost of passage were guaranteed the right to purchase additional land at just under half its "book" value. The opportunity to become nobles in their own right had drawn the interest of an extraordinarily high percentage of young, skilled, well-paid professionals: physicians, engineers, educators, chemists and physicists, botanists and biologists—exactly the sort of people a faltering colonial population required and all too few out-worlds could attract. They'd arrived to claim and expand their guaranteed credit, and many of those so-called "second shareholders" had become earls and even dukes in their own right.

Of those who hadn't been able to pay their own passage in full, many had been able to pay much of the cost and so had received the difference in land credits on arrival. Small by Manticoran standards, perhaps, but enormous by core-world lights. Those people had become Manticore's freeholding yeomen, like Honor's own ancestors, and their families retained a sturdy sense of independence even today.

Yet for all that, the majority of the new arrivals had been "zero-balancers," individuals unable to pay any of their passage, who, in many cases, arrived on Manticore wearing all they owned upon their backs. Individuals like Heinrich Hauptman.

Today, there was little to differentiate, aside from the antiquity of original homestead land grants and certain purely honorific forms of address which were used with steadily decreasing frequency, between the descendants of yeomen and zero-balancers. But traditional memories of social status remained, and the Hauptman clan had never forgotten its hardscrabble roots. The family's rise to its present greatness had begun two Manticoran centuries before with Heinrich's great-grandson, yet Klaus Hauptman, who could have bought or sold a dozen dukedoms, still chose to regard himself—publicly, at least—as the champion of the "little man." It didn't prevent him from cementing business alliances with the aristocracy, nor from enjoying the power and luxury of his merchant prince status or becoming deeply involved in Manticoran politics, but his "commoner heritage" was fundamental to his fierce, prideful self-image. He regarded himself as a self-made man and the descendant of self-made men, despite the wealth to which he had been born.

And that image of himself was what had brought him here today, Honor told herself, for she'd hurt it. She'd caught him, or his employees, at least, dabbling in illegal trade, and to a man of his pride and self-aware importance that constituted a direct attack upon him, no mere business reverse or legal embarrassment. In his own eyes, Klaus Hauptman was the Hauptman Cartel, and that made her actions a personal insult he could not tolerate.

"Very well, Commander Harrington," he said at last, "I'll come straight to the point. For reasons of your own, you have seen fit to harass my interests in Basilisk. I want it stopped."

"I'm sorry you see it as `harassment,' Mr. Hauptman," Honor said calmly. "Unfortunately, my oath to the Crown requires me to execute and enforce the regulations established by Parliament."

"Your oath doesn't require you to single out the Hauptman Cartel for your enforcement, Commander." Hauptman didn't raise his voice, but there was a vicious snap under its smooth surface.

"Mr. Hauptman," Honor faced him levelly, folding her hands tightly under the edge of the table, "we have inspected all commerce with the surface of Medusa or the Basilisk orbital warehouses, not simply that consigned here by your firm."

"Nonsense!" Hauptman snorted. "No other senior officer on this station has ever interfered so blatantly with Basilisk's legitimate merchant traffic. More to the point, I have numerous reports from my factors here to the effect that your `customs' parties spend far more time `examining' my shipments than anyone else's. If that's not harassment, I would very much like to know what you feel does constitute harassment, Commander!"

"What may or may not have been done by previous senior officers has no bearing on my responsibilities or duties, Mr. Hauptman," Honor said with cool precision. "And if, in fact, my inspection parties have spent more time on Hauptman Cartel shipments, that is entirely because our own experience has indicated that they are more likely than most to contain illegal items."

Hauptman's face darkened dangerously, but she made herself gaze back without any sign of her inner tension.

"Are you accusing me of smuggling, Commander Harrington?" The baritone was deeper and darker, almost silky.

"I am saying, Mr. Hauptman, that the record demonstrates that the incidence of contraband in shipments registered to your firm is thirty-five percent above that of any other firm trading with Medusa. Whether you are personally involved in those illegal activities or not, I cannot, of course say. For myself, I doubt it. Until such time, however, as we have satisfied ourselves that no contraband is passing under cover of a Hauptman Cartel manifest, my boarding officers will, at my orders, devote special attention to your shipments." Hauptman's face had grown steadily darker, and Honor paused, regarding him calmly. "If you desire an end to what you regard as `harassment,' Sir, I would suggest that you insist that your own managers see to their internal housekeeping."

"How dare you?!" Hauptman exploded, half-surging to his feet. Honor's hands tightened further under the table, but she sat motionless. "I don't know who you think you are, but I refuse to sit here and be insulted in this fashion! I'd advise you to watch your wild allegations, Commander!"

"I've stated only facts, not `wild allegations,' Mr. Hauptman," she said unflinchingly. "If you prefer not to hear them, then I suggest you leave."

"Leave? Leave?!" Hauptman was fully on his feet now, bracing his weight on the table as his voice filled the briefing room like thunder. "I came here to give you a chance to correct your gross mishandling of the situation! If you prefer, I can take it up with the Admiralty—or the government—instead of dealing with a jumped-up, over-inflated commander who insults me to my face by accusing me of illegal activities!"

"That is, of course, your option." Honor felt McKeon's coiled-spring tension beside her, but her own anxiety was fading, licked away by the steadily rising lava of her own anger. "In the meantime, however, you are a guest in my ship, Mr. Hauptman, and you will keep a civil tongue in your head or I will have you ejected from it!"

Hauptman's mouth dropped open in shock at her icy tone, and she leaned into his silence.

"I have not accused you, personally, of any illegalities. I have stated, and the record amply demonstrates, that individuals within your firm are engaged in illegal activities. Your threats to resort to higher authority do not alter that fact, nor will they alter my discharge of my responsibilities in light of it."

Hauptman sank back into his chair, jaw muscles bunched. Hushed silence hovered in the briefing room, and then he smiled. It wasn't a pleasant expression.

"Very well, Commander. Since you choose to see the possibility of my seeking redress through the Admiralty as a `threat,' and since you seem unwilling to see the justice of extending even-handed treatment to my interests here, perhaps I can put this in terms you can understand. I am telling you, now, that you will cease harassing my ships and my shipments or that I will hold you personally—not the Navy, not the Government, you —responsible for the damage you are inflicting upon my business and personal good name."

"Whom you choose to hold responsible and for what is your affair, not mine." Honor's voice was cold.

"You can't hide behind your uniform from me, Commander," Hauptman said unpleasantly. "I am asking only for the courtesy and respect due any law-abiding private citizen. If you choose to use your position as an officer of the Crown to pursue some sort of personal vendetta against me, I will have no option but to use my resources to respond in kind."

"As I've already stated, I have not and do not intend to level any accusation against you personally until and unless clear and incontrovertible evidence that you knowingly permitted your employees to engage in illegal activities is presented. In the meantime, however, threats against me as an individual will have no more effect than threats to pressure me through my superiors." Honor's mind was cold and clear with the ice-hot flicker of her own anger, and her eyes were dark brown steel. "If you wish your shipments to pass with minimal delays for inspection, all you must do is see to it they contain no contraband. That," she added with cool deliberateness, "should not be an insurmountable task for a law-abiding private citizen of your means and authority, Sir."

"Very well, Commander," he grated. "You've chosen to insult me, whatever legalism you care to cloak that in. I'll give you one more opportunity to back off. If you don't, then I'll by God push you back."

"No, Sir, you will not," Honor said softly, and Hauptman gave a crack of scornful laughter. His body language radiated fury and contempt as he gave his renowned temper full rein, but his voice was hard and cold when he spoke once more.

"Oh, but I will, Commander. I will. I believe your parents are senior partners in the Duvalier Medical Association?"

Despite herself, Honor twitched in surprise at the complete non sequitur. Then her eyes narrowed, and her head tilted dangerously.

"Well, Commander?" Hauptman almost purred. "Am I correct?"

"You are," she said flatly.

"Then if you insist on making this a personal confrontation, you should consider the repercussions it may have on your own family, Madam, because the Hauptman Cartel controls a seventy percent interest in that organization's public stock. Do I make myself clear, Commander?"

Honor stiffened in her chair, her face paper-white, and the steel in her eyes was no longer chilled. It blazed, and the corner of her mouth twitched violently. Hauptman's own eyes gleamed as he misinterpreted that involuntary muscle spasm, and he leaned back, smiling and triumphant.

"The decision is yours, Commander. I am merely an honest merchant endeavoring to protect my legitimate interests and those of my shareholders in this system. If you insist on interfering with those legitimate interests, you leave me no choice but to defend myself in any way I can, however distasteful I may personally find the measures to which you compel me ... or however unfortunate their consequences for your parents."

Honor's muscles quivered with hate, her fingers taloned in her lap, and she felt her lips draw back to spit her defiance in his face, but someone else's flat, cold voice spoke first.

"I suggest you reconsider that threat, Mr. Hauptman," Alistair McKeon said.

The sudden interruption was so utterly unexpected that Honor turned to him in amazement. Her executive officer's face was no longer masklike. It was tight with anger, the gray eyes snapping, and Hauptman regarded him as if he were an item of furniture whose presence the magnate had forgotten.

"I'm not accustomed to accepting the advice of uniformed flunkies," he sneered.

"Then I suggest you become accustomed," McKeon replied in that same, hammered-iron voice. "Ever since your arrival in this briefing room, you have persistently attempted to construe Commander Harrington's actions as a personal attack upon yourself. In the process, you have insulted her, the Royal Navy, and the discharge of our duties to the Crown. You have, in fact, made it abundantly clear that neither the law nor your responsibilities under it are as important to you as your own precious reputation. Despite your calculated insolence, the Captain has maintained an air of courtesy and respect, yet when she refuses to ignore her duty as an officer of the Queen or modify it to suit your demands, you have seen fit to threaten not just her personally, but the livelihood of her parents." Contempt blazed in the lieutenant commander's eyes. "I therefore warn you, Sir, that I will be prepared to so testify in any court of law."

"Court of law?" Hauptman reared back in surprise, and Honor felt almost as surprised even through her fury. What was McKeon—?

"Yes, Sir, a court of law, where your persistent attempts to compel the Queen's Navy to abandon its responsibilities will, no doubt, be seen as proof of collusion in treason and murder."

Absolute shock filled the briefing room with silence in the wake of McKeon's cold, hard voice. Hauptman paled in disbelief, but then his face darkened once more.

"You're insane! You're out of your mind! There's no—"

"Mr. Hauptman," McKeon interrupted the sputtering magnate harshly, "forty-seven hours ago, sixty-one Native Protection Agency police were killed or wounded in the pursuit of their duty. They were murdered, by off-world individuals trading with the Medusan natives in prohibited drugs. The laboratory manufacturing those drugs was powered by way of an unauthorized shunt installed in the backup orbital power collector of Her Majesty's Government's enclave on Medusa. That shunt, Mr. Hauptman, which Navy personnel discovered and positively identified not eight hours ago, was not installed after the collector was placed in Medusa orbit; it was installed when the collector was manufactured ... by the Hauptman Cartel!"

Hauptman stared at him, too shocked to speak, and he continued in the same, grating voice.

"Since that shunt constitutes unimpeachable physical evidence linking your cartel or individuals employed by it with the drug operation, and hence with the murder of those officers, your blatant efforts to divert official attention from your operations here can only be construed as an effort to conceal guilt—either yours, or your employees. In either case, Sir, that would constitute collusion and thus make you, personally, an accomplice after the fact to murder at the very least. And I remind you that the use of Her Majesty's property in a capital crime—particularly one which results in the death of Crown officers—constitutes treason under the law of this kingdom. I respectfully submit—" he didn't sound at all respectful, Honor thought in shock "—that it is in your best interest and the interest of your cartel's future business reputation to cooperate fully with Commander Harrington's efforts to discover the true guilty parties rather than place yourself in a position of grave suspicion by obstructing an official investigation of Her Majesty's officers in this system."

"You're insane," Hauptman repeated, this time in a whisper. "Treason? Murder? You know Hauptman's hasn't — that I haven't—"

"Sir, I know only the facts I've just stated. Under the circumstances, and assuming you continue in your vendetta against the Captain — your vendetta, Sir, and not hers — I believe it would be my duty as an officer of the Queen to lay those facts before a court."

Alistair McKeon met Klaus Hauptman's disbelieving eyes with a cold, gray glare, and the magnate blanched. Honor made herself sit very still, grinding her heel down on the rage that still roared within her. Not for a moment did she believe Hauptman had been personally involved with the power tap or the drug lab. For that matter, she was almost certain he hadn't been personally involved in any of the illegal activities of his cartel in Basilisk. But his overweening pride and arrogance had been able to see the consequences of her actions only as a personal attack, and he had descended to the lowest and most contemptible of tactics simply to divert embarrassment from himself and punish her for daring to do her duty. That casual abuse of his own power and position filled her with as much revulsion as rage, and she had no intention of tempering McKeon's totally unexpected counterattack in any way. Hauptman had set the tone himself; now he could live with it.

"You wouldn't dare," the magnate said softly.

"Sir, I would." McKeon's voice was chipped flint, and Hauptman sat back in his chair, glaring back and forth between him and Honor.

"All right," he grated at last. "I see you've covered yourself after all, Commander Harrington. So go ahead, play tin-god out here. I wash my hands of the entire situation. Examine anything you damned well want, but don't you ever—ever — think this is over!"

McKeon gathered himself afresh, but Honor touched his arm and shook her head. She stood in silence, and when the exec made to rise with her, she waved him gently back into his chair. She inclined her head coldly at Hauptman, then gestured at the briefing room hatch, and the seething magnate stalked through it as it opened.

The bridge was still as death when they emerged onto it, but Honor scarcely noticed. She accompanied Hauptman into the lift, and the two of them rode to the boat bay in a silence deeper than the stars. But when they arrived, Honor reached out and pressed the override button, holding the lift door closed, and turned to him.

"Mr. Hauptman," she said in a voice of frozen helium, "you've seen fit to insult me and my officers and to threaten my parents. In fact, you have descended to the tactics of gutter scum, and that, in my opinion, Sir, is precisely what you have proven yourself to be." Hauptman's nostrils flared in a congested face, but she continued in the same ice-cold voice.

"I am fully aware that you have no intention of forgetting this incident. Neither, I assure you, have I. Nor will I forget your threats. I am a Queen's officer. As such, I will react to any personal attack upon me only if and as it arises, and for myself, both personally and as a Queen's officer, I dislike the custom of dueling. But, Mr. Hauptman, should you ever attempt to carry through your threat against my parents—" her eyes were leveled missile batteries and the tic at the corner of her mouth jerked like a living thing "—I will denounce you publicly for your contemptible actions and demand satisfaction. And when you accept my challenge, Mr. Hauptman, I will kill you like the scum you are."

Hauptman stepped back against the wall of the lift, staring at her in shocked disbelief.

"Believe it, Mr. Hauptman," she said very, very softly, and let the lift door open at last.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Adrenalin still flared in Honor's blood and nerves as she rode the lift back to the bridge. That had been an ugly side of her, but the petty, repulsive shallowness hiding behind Klaus Hauptman's wealthy front had waked it, and she'd meant every word. More than that, he knew she had. And they both knew that his reputation — his all — important, self-worshipping reputation —would never survive should he refuse her challenge if it came.

She drew a deep breath as the lift stopped. The door opened, and she stepped out onto the bridge. Panowski looked up quickly, his face anxious, and she realized some of the vicious confrontation must have leaked past the briefing room hatch. Or perhaps it had simply been the tension between her and Hauptman when they passed back through on their way to the boat bay. It didn't matter. The lieutenant knew. His worried face showed his reaction, and she saw matching expressions on the faces of most of her ratings.

She paused for a moment, forcing herself to smile. Panowski's concern remained, but he relaxed visibly, and she made herself move slowly and calmly as she walked to the center of the bridge and looked around for McKeon. There was no sign of him, but the briefing room door was closed.

She crossed to it, and the executive officer looked up as the hatch slid aside. She didn't like stepping into that compartment just then. Too much cold hatred had washed its bulkheads, and she could feel the prickles of McKeon's residual rage radiating out to mesh and resonate with hers, yet he managed a strained smile and started to rise.

She waved him back and crossed to her own chair. She sank into it and turned it to face him.

"You took a chance, Alistair," she said. It was the first time she'd ever used his given name, but he didn't even seem to notice.

"I—" He wiggled his shoulders. "He just made me so damned mad, Ma'am. Coming in here like God descending to smite the sinners. And that last filthy trick of his—" The exec gritted his teeth and shook his head.

"He's not going to forget the way you backed him down." McKeon nodded, and Honor felt a certain bitter irony at the way her words echoed his own warning to her after Tremaine discovered that first illegal Hauptman shipment. "You shouldn't have done it," she went on levelly. "It was my fight and my responsibility, but ... thank you."

McKeon's head came up, and he flushed.

"It wasn't just your fight, Ma'am. It was the Navy's. Hell, it was Fearless's, and that makes it mine, too." His flush deepened, and he looked back down at the fingers suddenly interlaced in his lap.

"I ... haven't been much of an exec to you, have I, Ma'am?" he asked quietly.

Honor started a quick reply, then paused, gazing at the crown of his lowered head. This man had just put himself far, far out on a limb for her. He'd antagonized one of the most powerful men in the Kingdom, and she shuddered to think where her confrontation with Hauptman would have ended had she responded without his intervention. The use of the collector tap to turn Hauptman's manipulations back on him had never even occurred to her. She hadn't been thinking clearly enough for that. All she'd felt was hate and disgust and the need to strike back. She knew herself—knew she'd hovered on the brink of physically attacking the man in her fury, and that would have ruined her, whatever the provocation.

McKeon had stopped her before she did that. He'd seen the opening and taken it, forced Hauptman back onto the defensive, won her time to regain at least some control of herself. She owed him for that—owed him a deep, intensely personal debt she rather doubted she could every repay. And because she did, she wanted to tell him not to worry, to brush over his shortcomings as her first officer.

But she was a warship's captain. Personal feelings and gratitude, however deep or deserved, took second place to that. They must. And so she cleared her throat and spoke in a soft, impersonal tone.

"No, Mr. McKeon," she said. "You haven't." She watched him flinch, saw his shoulders tighten, and wanted to reach out to him. But she didn't. She simply sat there, waiting.

The silence stretched out, tight and painful, and McKeon's hands washed themselves in his lap. She could hear him breathing, listened to the throb of her own pulse, and still she waited. She could feel his need to say something more and knew he needed time to say it in, and that at least she could give him, however long it took.

"I know I haven't, Ma'am," he said finally. "And ... I'm sorry." He twitched a shrug and looked up at her face. "It's not much, but it's all I can say. I've let you down—let the ship down—and I'm sorry."

"Why, Mr. McKeon?" she asked softly. He winced at the compassion in her voice, but he understood her question. For a moment she thought he might thrust himself up out of the chair and flee, but he didn't.

"Because—" He swallowed and looked around the briefing room without really seeing it. "Because I let my personal feelings get in the way of my duty, Ma'am." He made himself face her as he admitted it, and in that moment their ages were reversed. The tall, powerful executive officer seemed suddenly young and vulnerable, for all his years of experience, while he met her eyes almost desperately, as if begging her to understand.

"You came aboard, and you looked so damned young," he went on in a voice of wretched self-loathing. "I knew you deserved the command. God, I only had to check your record to know that! But I wanted it so badly myself. I didn't have the seniority for it—" He broke off and laughed harshly.

"I'll probably never have the seniority. I'm a hack, Captain. A plodder. The kind who refuses to stick his neck out. But, God, how I wanted this ship. More than I'd ever admitted to myself. And there you were—five years younger than me with one hyper-capable command already under your belt, walking through the hatch straight from ATC and wearing the white beret I wanted."

His hands fisted in his lap, and then he did rise. He paced up and down the small briefing room like a caged animal, and Honor felt his anguish and self-condemnation. She could almost see the fog of his misery, wrapped around him like poison, but she sat on her sudden desire to break his monologue, to stop him or defend him from himself. She couldn't. He needed to say it—and she needed for him to say it, if there was any hope the barriers between them would truly come down.

"I hated you." His voice was muffled, bouncing back from the bulkhead as he looked away from her. "I told myself I didn't, but I did. And it didn't get better. It got worse every day. It got worse every time I saw you do something right and realized I'd wanted you to do it wrong so I could justify the way I felt.

"And then there were the maneuvers." He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. "Damn it, I knew they'd handed you an impossible job after the way they gutted our armament! I knew it was impossible—and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail. Captain, I'm a tac officer by training. Every single time something went wrong, every time another one of those goddamned Aggressor crews `destroyed' us, something inside me kept saying I could have done better. I knew I couldn't have, but that didn't matter. It was what I felt, I tried to do my duty anyway, but I couldn't. Not the way I should have."

He came closer to the table, leaning forward to brace himself on its top and bend towards her across it.

"And then this." He raised one hand to gesture at the bulkheads. "Basilisk Station." He returned his hand to the table beside its companion and stared down at them both. "I told myself it was your fault, that you were the one who'd gotten us sent here, and that was another lie. But every time I told myself one lie, I had to tell another to justify the ones that came before it. So it was your fault, not mine, and all that nonsense about doing our duty, about meeting our responsibilities whether anyone else had ever bothered to meet theirs or not—that was crap, Captain. That was bright-eyed, runny-nosed, idealistic, Academy crap, not the real world."

He looked up at her again.

"But it wasn't, was it, Ma'am?" he said softly. "Not to you. I don't know why Young dumped this on you. It doesn't matter why he did. What matters is that you didn't cry and moan. You didn't slack off. You just dug in and—" He shook his head and straightened.

"You kicked us in the ass, Captain. You kicked us over and over again, until we got up off our self-pitying backsides and started acting like Queen's officers again. And I knew what you were doing, and why you were doing it, the whole time, and I hated it. Hated it. Because every time you did something right, it was one more proof that you deserved the job I wanted."

He dropped into a chair, facing her across the table, and raised one hand almost pleadingly.

"Captain, you were right, and I was wrong. What's happening in this system right now proves you were, and if you want me off your ship, I wouldn't blame you at all."

He fell silent at last, hunched in despair, and Honor leaned forward in her chair.

"I don't want you off my ship, Commander," she said softly. His head jerked back up, and she waved a hand in the air between them.

"You're right. You did drop it all on me. I wanted you to meet me halfway—needed you to—and you wouldn't. Everything in the galaxy was coming together and falling on me at the same time, and you just sat there, refusing to open up, and left everything up to me. Oh, yes, Commander. There were days when I would gladly have sent you packing, with an efficiency report that would've put you ground-side forever, if I hadn't been so shorthanded, if I'd had enough experienced officers aboard to replace you with someone I could rely on. But—"

She paused, letting silence linger behind the word, then gave a tiny nod.

"But, Mr. McKeon, I would have been wrong to do that." He blinked in astonishment, and she smiled faintly. "Oh, there were times I wanted to kick you, or strangle you, or bite your head off in front of the entire wardroom, but then I realized you were trying.