Epilogue

"So you're finally ready, Captain," Vice Admiral Quentin O'Malley observed.

"Yes, Sir," Aivars Terekhov replied.

"I imagine you'll be glad to get home," O'Malley said.

"Yes, Sir," Terekhov repeated. "Very glad. Ericsson and the other repair ships have done a remarkable job, but she really needs a full-scale shipyard."

O'Malley nodded. In the three T-months since Rear Admiral Khumalo's arrival in Monica, the Talbott Station support ships had patched HMS Hexapuma up enough to at least get her home. Which had been just as remarkable a job as Terekhov had implied. They hadn't had much to work with, after all.

Of Terekhov's impromptu squadron, only Aegis and Hexapuma would ever return to service. Aria and Warlock were simply too old, too obsolescent, to be worth repairing, even if they hadn't been so severely mangled in the Battle of Monica. Warlock , at least, would be returning to the Star Kingdom under Commnder George Hibachi's command and her own power in company with Hexapuma , but only because repairing her alpha nodes had cost less than the Navy would be able to reclaim from her hull when she was broken up.

Yet the name Warlock would not disappear from the Royal Manticoran Navy. As Ito Anders had once said, HMS Warlock had not been fortunate in her commanding officers or her reputation. But Anders had repaired that fault. It had cost him his life, but his ship had redeemed herself. Like every unit of Terekhov's "Squadron," her name had been added to the List of Honor. Those names would be kept in commission in perpetuity in recognition of what they and their people had accomplished at such dreadful cost.

Fifty- one percent of Terekhov's personnel had died in Monica; another twenty-six percent had been wounded. Manticore's total casualties had been far lower than those of the Monican Navy. Probably, O'Malley reflected, even proportionately, but certainly in absolute terms. Which didn't change the fact that sixty percent of his ships had been destroyed outright, that the remaining forty percent had been brutally crippled, and that less than a quarter of their personnel were fit for duty. Yet somehow, with the missile pods from Volcano as their only remaining hole card, Aivars Terekhov's surviving, broken, air-bleeding wrecks had managed to hold an entire star system captive for seven standard days. One entire T-week. All by themselves, with no assurance Augustus Khumalo was really coming. With no way of knowing when a Solarian League task force might come over the alpha wall with blood in its eye.

No, O'Malley corrected himself. They had one other card, beside the pods. They had Terekhov.

He looked at the broad-shouldered, bearded captain whose blue eyes looked steadily back from under the band of his white beret. He looked so… ordinary in so many ways. A bit taller than average, perhaps. But there were only those unflinching eyes to give the lie to his ordinary appearance. And they were enough, O'Malley decided. Enough to explain why this man was already being compared by some to Honor Harrington or Ellen D'Orville. Perhaps even to Edward Saganami himself.

O'Malley wondered what Terekhov had thought when Hercules finally arrived. Had he been relieved? Or had he anticipated that Khumalo would order his arrest? Have him charged, court-martialed? From what O'Malley had seen of Terekhov since his own arrival in Monica with the Home Fleet relief force and Dame Amandine Corvisart, he suspected that the thought of court-martial and disgrace had held no terror for this man. No officer with the moral courage to do what he'd done, to risk-and suffer-the casualties his people had taken, after having already survived the Battle of Hyacinth, would hesitate to pay the price he'd known his decision might carry. Which was not to say he would have found the destruction of his own naval career any less agonizing simply because his own sense of duty had required that sacrifice of him.

Yet whatever Terekhov might have feared, Augustus Khumalo had turned out to possess hidden depths of his own. Depths Quentin O'Malley, for one, would never have suspected. Whatever Khumalo might have thought during his long voyage from Spindle to Monica, he had never hesitated or wavered a single millimeter after his arrival. He'd backed Terekhov's actions to the hilt. When Roberto Tyler demanded that he withdraw immediately from Monican territory, Khumalo had flatly refused. Perhaps the evidence of the two remaining Indefatigable -class battlecruisers at Eroica Station helped explain that. Yet O'Malley felt oddly certain that Khumalo would have supported Terekhov's actions anyway. The man would never be a brilliant officer, perhaps, but he'd demonstrated an astonishing depth of moral courage of his own, and his undamaged superdreadnought flagship and her consorts had been more than sufficient to transform the tense stalemate in Monica into a complete Monican surrender. Especially when he endorsed Terekhov's threat to destroy the remaining battlecruisers by bombardment.

There might still be a little hell to pay over that, O'Malley reflected. Under the letter of interstellar law, Terekhov and Khumalo would have been within the legitimate rights of a belligerent had they done precisely what they threatened, but that wasn't the sort of tactic the Royal Manticoran Navy normally embraced. Especially not when the Navy had invaded another sovereign star system without benefit of the minor formality of a declaration of war. Not to mention the fact that destroying the remaining battlecruisers might very well also have destroyed all supporting evidence for Terekhov's interpretation of the Monicans intentions if Tyler had chosen to stonewall.

Yet circumstances sometimes required draconian measures, and O'Malley's own report had fully endorsed Khumalo's and Terekhov's actions. And, unlike some, Vice Admiral O'Malley had no doubt whatsoever that Terekhov, at least, would have done exactly what he'd said he would do.

More importantly, perhaps, Roberto Tyler had believed it. When Dame Amandine finally arrived aboard O'Malley's flagship, over a month after the battle, Tyler had been a broken man, desperate to save what he could from the wreckage. Some of his subordinates, like Admiral Bourmont, had clearly clung to the hope that Frontier Security and the League might yet ride to their rescue. Tyler had cherished no such illusion. Or, at least, no hope that they would do so in time to make any difference to him personally. And so, rather than defy Dame Amandine's demands, he'd capitulated promptly in return for her promise that O'Malley would not complete the destruction of his military forces or forcibly topple his regime.

The bargain had been a simple one. In return for its continued existence, the Republic of Monica had signed a permanent nonaggression pact with the Star Kingdom of Manticore… and surrendered to Manticore the two surviving battlecruisers and all documentary evidence of the involvement of Manpower, Technodyne Industries, and the Jessyk Combine in its projected seizure of the Lynx Terminus.

Dame Amandine had proven fiendishly devious, too. She'd actually arranged for her own diplomatic and intelligence teams to be accompanied every step of the way by representatives of the Sollies' own interstellar news services. The League's reporters had observed every bit of evidence as it was handed over by the Monicans, and they'd been allowed to examine it themselves. O'Malley had seen their reportage, and in his opinion, no unbiased observer could possibly doubt the validity of that evidence. Of course, that probably wouldn't make a great deal of difference to Manpower or Jessyk. They were both headquartered in Mesa, not the League. As such, the League had no responsibility for or jurisdiction over their actions, however reprehensible the League might-officially-consider those actions.

Technodyne, though. Technodyne was another matter entirely. Izrok Levakonic hadn't survived the destruction of the military component of Eroica Station, but his body had been positively identified, and his personal computer files had been recovered from the wreckage. Coupled with the evidence Tyler had provided as the price for continued political survival, Technodyne's guilt could not be denied. In the face of such evidence not even the League's bureaucracies could protect the enormous corporation, and it had already collapsed, the value of its stock plummeting, a third of its board of directors already under indictment, and half of those not indicted-yet-turning state's evidence in an effort to save their own skins.

No doubt Technodyne would survive. It was too big, too important to the League-both to its economy and its military-to be allowed to fail completely. So one day it would reemerge, phoenixlike, from the flames of reorganization, but not quickly or soon. And at least some of those responsible for what had happened here would probably actually spend time in prison, which was more than O'Malley had ever believed might happen.

Dame Amandine had already announced the Star Kingdom's intention of seeking the extradition from Mesa of Aldona Anisimovna and Isabel Bardasano on charges of complicity in murder, terrorism, and illegal weapons trafficking. No one believed for an instant that the extradition request would be granted, but at least Anisimovna and Bardasano would know what was waiting for them if Manticore ever did get its hands on them.

The one thing which had unfortunately avoided Dame Amandine was positive proof of Frontier Security's involvement. Anisimovna and Bardasano had gotten off Monica aboard their private ship before Khumalo arrived. With his own ships so badly damaged, Terekhov would have been unable to prevent their escape even if he'd known about it in time, and all indications were that certain Gendarmerie officers had disappeared with them. Tyler and Alfonso Higgins, the head of his intelligence services, both claimed the Gendarmes-and, so, by extension, Frontier Security itself-had provided Anisimovna with significant support. But there was no concrete evidence to support that contention, and so Dame Amandine had opted to make no charges against OFS.

O'Malley didn't like that, but he understood it. Even with absolute, irrefutable proof such charges would have been extremely dangerous. They would have backed Lorcan Verrochio into a corner, and there was no way of knowing how he and his fellow Frontier Security satraps would have responded. Given the powerful Solarian bureaucracies' de facto control of League policy, it was entirely possible that accusing OFS of complicity would have resulted in outright hostilities with the Sollies. And so, reluctantly, O'Malley found himself forced to agree with Dame Amandine's decision. It left a sour taste, but sour tastes sometimes had to be swallowed.

And no amount of pulser dart-dodging on Frontier Security's part could detract one iota from what Terekhov and his people had accomplished in Monica.

"Well, Captain," the vice admiral said, holding out his hand, "I'm sure the yard will put her back to rights quickly. We need her-and you-back in service. Godspeed, Captain."

"Thank you, Sir." Terekhov gripped his hand firmly. Then he stepped back and saluted. Electronic bosun's pipes wailed and the side party came to attention, and Terekhov turned and swung himself across the interface into the zero-gravity of his waiting pinnace's boarding tube. Then he was gone, and Vice Admiral Quentin O'Malley discovered that the boat bay gallery was a smaller, poorer place without that ordinary-looking man.