"Yes and no, Dame Honor," Benson cautioned. "Theyre arrogant as hell, and God knows Henri and I know they dont give a good goddamn what they do to us or how we might feel about it. And, no, I dont think they have any spies or bugs down in the camp. But they might, and they dont take any chances at all with their personal safety off Styx. Only a camp full of outright lunatics would try to rush one of the supply shuttles. Even if they took it, they couldnt go anywhere with it, and all theyd get would be a month or so of food, whereas everyone in the camp knows that the Peeps would starve them all to death for any attack. But they come in armed, and theyll shoot one of us down for even looking like we might be a threat. We need our spears for defense against the local predatorsthey havent figured out they cant digest usand our knives" she gestured at the blades in LaFollets belt "are survival tools. But if even a single blade is within a hundred meters of the shuttle pad, theyll hose it off with heavy pulser fire and kill every single prisoner inside the landing zone before they touch down." She shrugged. "Like I say, nobody gives a good goddamn what the Black Legs do to us."
"Ill bear that in mind," Honor said grimly, "and the time might just be coming when some of those Black Legs will learn the error of their ways." The right corner of her lips drew up, baring her teeth. "But my point right now is that we cant take the chance that you and I are wrong about whether or not they have Inferno under observation, and I really need to speak to this Commodore Ramirez. Would you two be willing to invite him to come up here to speak with me this evening? And could you convince him to do it without giving anything away if the Peeps are bugging the camp?"
"Yes, and yes," Benson said promptly.
"Good!" Honor held out her hand, and the captain from Pegasus gripped it firmly. Then all three of them stood, and Honor smiled at LaFollet.
"Hand our friends back their spears, Andrew. Theyre on our side, I believe."
"Yes, My Lady." LaFollet bobbed his head in a half-bow to Benson and handed the spears over, then pulled the stone blades from his belt and passed them across. "And may I say," he added, with a confidence born of his faith in his Steadholder and her treecats ability to read what others felt, "that Im much happier to have them on our side than the other!"
Chapter Fourteen
The man who followed Benson and Dessouix up the hill just as the sun was setting was enormous. Honor told herself it was only the setting sun behind him as he climbed the slope towards her which made him look like some faceless black giant or troll out of a terrifying childhood tale, but she was forced to reconsider that opinion as he drew nearer. He was over five centimeters taller than she was, yet that only began to tell the tale, for San Martin was one of the heaviest gravity planets mankind had ever settled. Not even people like Honor herself, descended from colonists genetically engineered for heavy-grav planets before humanity abandoned that practice, could breathe San Martins sea-level atmosphere. It was simply too dense, with lethal concentrations of carbon dioxide and even oxygen. So San Martins people had settled the mountaintops and high mesas of their huge home world... and their physiques reflected the gravity to which they were born.
As did that of the man who reached the top of the hill and drew up short at sight of her. She felt his surprise at seeing her, but it was only surprise, not astonishment. Well, surprise and intense, disciplined curiosity. She didnt know what Benson and Dessouix had told him to get him out here. Clearly they hadnt told him everything, or he wouldnt have been surprised, but hed taken that surprise in stride with a mental flexibility Honor could only envy.
"And who might you be?" His voice was a deep, subterranean rumble, as one would expect from a man who must weigh in at somewhere around a hundred and eighty kilos, but the San Martin accent gave it a soft, almost lilting air. It was one Honor had heard beforemost recently from a since deceased StateSec guard with a taste for sadism. Yet hearing it now, there was something about his voice...
She stepped closer, moving slightly to one side to get the sunset out of her eyes, and sucked in a sudden breath as she saw his face clearly at last. He wore a neatly trimmed beard, but that wasnt enough to disguise his features, and she heard an abrupt, muffled oath from LaFollet as he, too, saw the newcomer clearly for the first time.
It cant be, she thought. Its just And hes dead. Everyone knows that! The possibility never even crossed my mind... but why should it have? Its not an uncommon last name on San Martin, and what are the odds that Id She gave herself a hard mental shake and made herself respond.
"Harrington," she heard herself say almost numbly. "Honor Harrington."
"Harrington?" The initial "H" almost vanished into the deep, musical reverberations of his voice, and then his dark brown eyes narrowed as he saw her holstered pulser... and the salvaged StateSec trousers and tee-shirt she wore. Those eyes leapt to LaFollets pulse rifle, and beyond him to Mayhew and Clinkscales, and his hand darted to the hilt of his stone knife. The blade scraped out of its sheath, and Honor felt the sudden eruption of his emotions. Shock, betrayal, fury, and a terrifying, grim determination. He started to spring forward, but Honor threw up her hand.
"Stop! " she barked. The single word cracked through the hot evening air like a thunderbolt, ribbed with thirty years of command experience. It was a captains voicea voice which knew it would be obeyedand the huge man hesitated for one bare instant. Only for an instant... yet that was time for the muzzle of Andrew LaFollets pulse rifle to snap up to cover him.
"Bastards! " The voice was no longer soft, and fury seethed behind his eyes, but he had himself back under control. His hatred would not drive him over the edge into a berserk attack, but he turned his head and bared his teeth at Benson and Dessouix in a snarl.
"Just a moment, Commodore!" Honor said sharply. His attention snapped back to her, almost against his will, and she smiled crookedly. "I dont blame you for being suspicious," she went on in a more normal voice. "I would be, too, in your circumstances. But you didnt let me finish my introduction. Im an officer in the Royal Manticoran Navy, not State Security."
"Oh?" The single dripped disbelief, and he cocked his head. Am I going to have to go through this with everyone I introduce myself to on this planet? Honor wondered. But she controlled her exasperation and nodded calmly.
"Yes," she said, "and as I explained to Captain Benson and Lieutenant Dessouix earlier, I have a proposition for you."
"Im sure you do," he said flatly, and this time she let her exasperation show.
"Commodore Ramirez, what possible motive could the Peeps have for luring you out here and pretending to be Manticorans?" she demanded. "If they wanted you dead, all theyd have to do would be to stop delivering food to you! Or if theyre too impatient for that, Im sure a little napalm, or a few snowflake clustersor an old-fashioned ground sweep by infantry, for goodness sakecould deal with you!"
"No doubt," he said, still in that flat tone, and Honor felt the anger grinding about in him like boulders. This man had learned to hate. His hatred might not rule him, but it was a part of himhad been for so many years that his belief she was StateSec was interfering with his thinking.
"Look," she said, "you and I need to talktalk, Commodore. We can help each other, and with luck, I believe, we may even be able to get off this planet completely. But for any of that to happen, you have to at least consider the possibility that my men and I are not Peeps."
"Not Peeps, but you just happen to turn up in Black Leg uniform, with Peep weapons, on a planet only the Peeps know how to find," he said. "Of course you arent."