"Well!" Jason Windrider doffed his braided cap and waved at a chair. "Thank God that's over! Though I must say--was he cocked his head critically his-comthe Golden Lion looks good on you, Han. Sort of sets off your hair." "Thank you," she said dryly, trying to hide her own deep emotion as she sat. She touched the Golden Lion of Terra--the highest award for valor of Republic and Federation alike. "If this is what the loser gets, I'd like to see the winner's medals!" "You didn't lose, Hah," Windrider said decisively. "You and Bob were right. We should'ye gone in fast and nasty, before their new forts and beams and those Godawful missiles were on line." "Maybe," Hah said, "but I surrendered, so I'm the one who's going to face a Board over it--and maybe a full Court." "The Court already sat," Windrider said, suddenly grim, "on the admirals who ran out on you. I won't lie to you--some people were cashiered, but everyone knows you held the battle-line together in a hopeless situation and then had the good sense not to get thousands of people killed for nothing." He shrugged again.
"That's more or less what the Admiralty said, in fancier language, when it recommended you--unanimously--for the Golden-Lion." "I see." Hah drew a deep breath and felt the tension flow away at last.
"Do you, now?" Windrider grinned. "Actually, there's an even more tangible proof of their lordships" attitude." "Oh?" she eyed him suspiciously. "A blindfold and a last cigarette?" "You have an untrusting nature," Windrider said sorrowfully. Then he became more serious. "I'm afraid it's slightly non-reg, Hah, and Magda wanted to give you this, but she can't make it, so I have to deputize. Here." Han opened the small case and gasped as she saw the double stars nestled in the dark velvet.
She stood abruptly, left hand rising to the single star at her collar, and her eyes were shocked. "Yes, sir," the rear admiral said.
"B-but I'm not ready!" Han wailed. "I was only a captain four years ago!" Yet she seemed unable to resist as he fastened the badge in place. "I just got back from surrendering an entire battle fleet!" "Han," Windrider said severely, "sit down and shut up.
She sat obediently, too shaken to notice how brashly a rear admiral was ordering a vice admiral about.
"Better," he said. "Now listen to me. Every senior officer in the Fleet knows you and Bob wanted to attack earlier, and most of 'em know the panic that really beat us at Zephrain wouldn't have happened if you'd been senior to the bastards who-- Never mind." He shook his head sharply.
"But there's not a one of them who questions giving you thatstar. None. And no doubts will be entertained from you, either, young lady!
"Besides, we need you. Admiral Ashigara is dead, and so are Kellerman, Matucek, Ryder, Nishin, Shukov, Hyde- White, Mombora "His voice trailed somberly off, and she stared at him.
"That many?" "And more," he confirmed. "Hah, we never did have many admirals, and those we had have taken a terrible pounding; we've got to promote. I was a eomeawander four years ago, for God's sake] If I can take my medicine and wear one star, you can damned well wear two--got it?" "Yes, sir," she said meekly, touching her collar badges and smiling at last. "I just hope it isn't a mistake." "Hah, will you please get it through your radiation-jellied Oriental brain that you've got those stars--and that medal because you're one of the best we've got?" She eyed him doubtfully, and he grinned.
"Besides, ff we don't give 'em to you, somebody might try to give 'em to me, God help us!" The skimmer swooped downwards, and Han peered out at the lights blazing against the night. They marked a sprawling mansion, one-time home of the Corporate World manager of Bonaparte's largest chesht plantation, taken." over by the Republican military when the focus of opera- tions shifted to Zephrain.
Windrider grounded the skimmer and popped the hatches, and Han climbed out, wrinkling her nose as the reek of over-ripe chesht mingled with the fresh smell of marshes. It amazed her that something whose flavor had supplanted chocolate and vanilla alike in Terran estimation could smell so horrible in its native habitat.
Strange voices shrilled and clicked in the night, and wings fluttered as Bonaparte's equivalent of a bat flitted past. She glanced upward, but the two larger moons had set and the third, Joseph, was little more than a low-albedo lump of captured asteroidal rock. Its wan illumination barely brought a glow to the mists and hinted at rather than revealed the artificially precise spacing of angular machinery.
Chesht-pickers rusting in idleness, she thought as the cool breeze off the marsh rustled the chesht pods.
Bonaparte's F1 primary was hot, but the planet was near the outer edge of the liquid-water belt.
Even high summer was cool, which suited Han well, for it produced a climate very like that of her homewodd. Jason however, came from Topaz--a warm, dusty world with little axial tilt--and he preferred less chilly environs. He rubbed his hands briskly and tried to look patient as she sucked in the crisp air.
"Lead on." "Good!" he agreed quickly, and guided her through a doubleopaned door into what had been a palatial foyer before the Republican Navy took charge. A pair of Marine guards came sharply to attention as they stepped inside, and as Hah noted their unsealed holsters, she suddenly realized what those angular shapes in the marsh had been: not chesht-piekers, but heavy armored vehicles. And the thick glass entry doors weren't glass at all, but armorplast capable of resisting medium artillery fire!
"Good evening, Admiral Li. Admiral Windrider." A Marine major saluted them. "May I see some identification$7' He subjected their ID folios to the most rigorous cheek Hah lad seen since the war began. What in God's name was going on here?
"Thank you, sir." The major returned her ID and summoned an armed oi'derly. "Chief Yeoman Santander will escort you to the planning room." "Thank you, Major." Han returned his salute, then fol- lowed the silent yeoman into the house proper and down a corridor. He stopped and opened a door, raising his voice without entering,
"Admiral Li and Admiral Windrider, sir!" he said crisply, and stepped back as they passed him.
"Thank you, Chief Santander," a warm, easily-recognized voice said.
"Magda! Jason didn't say you were here!" "I know he didn't." Magda Petrovna smiled from behind her desk in the large, brightly lit room, and the paired stars on her collar mirrored Han's. "Very few people know I'm here, and they aren't talking." "But why all the secrecy?" "I'm about to Sell you, Han," Magda said with the chuckle Han remembered so well. "After which you'll disappear, too. Where's she off to, Jason?" Brown eyes rose to smile over Han's head at Windrider.
"Vice Admiral Li is returning to Novaya Rodina for debriefing," Windrider said smoothly. "In fact, I escorted her aboard ship myself." "You see?" Magda asked with a grin.
"No, I don't see at all!" "It's pretty simple, really. You and I, my dear, are the Republic's last great hope." Magda's voice was humorous; her eyes weren't.
"Meaning what?" Han demanded.
"Meaning that you and I--with the help of a few souls like Jason, Bob Tomanga, and Tsing Chang -comare now the Republic's answer to lan Trevayne." "We're going back to Zephrain?" Han was stunned by the recklessness of the idea. "Magda, I don't think you under- stand just what--was "No, Han," Magda said softly.
"rrevayne is coming to us.
He's staging a breakout sometime in the next five standard months." Han sat down heavily. It had all come at her too fast, she thought dazedly. The homecoming, her medal and promotion, all the secrecy and security--notow this. She , couldn't have understood correctly. to.....