David Weber - In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V (Honor Harrington)

In Fire Forged

Worlds of Honor V-ARC

Advance Reader Copy

David Weber

Baen Books by David Weber

Honor Harrington:

On Basilisk Station

The Honor of the Queen

The Short Victorious War

Field of Dishonor

Flag in Exile

Honor Among Enemies

In Enemy Hands

Echoes of Honor

Ashes of Victory

War of Honor

At All Costs

Mission of Honor

Honorverse:

Crown of Slaves (with Eric Flint)

The Shadow of Saganami

Storm from the Shadows

edited by David Weber:

More than Honor

Worlds of Honor

Changer of Worlds

The Service of the Sword

In Fire Forged

Mutineers Moon

The Armageddon Inheritance

Heirs of Empire

Empire from the Ashes

In Fury Born

The Apocalypse Troll

The Excalibur Alternative

Bolos!

Old Soldiers

Oath of Swords

The War Gods Own

Wind Riders Oath

with Steve White:

Crusade

In Death Ground

The Stars At War

The Shiva Option

Insurrection

The Stars At War II

with Eric Flint:

1633

1634: The Baltic War

with John Ringo:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

March to the Stars

We Few

with Linda Evans:

Hells Gate

Hell Hath No Fury

IN FIRE FORGED

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2011 by Worlds of Weber

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3414-6

Cover art by David Mattingly

Interior schematics by Thomas Marrone, Thomas Pope and William H. Edwards

First printing, February 2011

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Ruthless

Jane Lindskold

Gone. Her child was gone.

Frantically, Judith Newland searched the small apartment she shared with her two-year-old daughter, Ruth.

Bedroom. Bathroom. Living area.

When she started opening cabinet doors and bending double so that she could look all the way to the back, Judith admitted to herself what she had known all along.

Somehow, during the short time she had stepped out into the hall to talk to that new woman from Human Services, little Ruth had completely and utterly disappeared.

A momentary urge to scream, to panic, filled Judiths heart. For all that her nineteen years had included kidnapping, rape, murder, piracy, and countless other horrific experiences, these last two years had been relatively peaceful. Almost without her noticing, Judith had allowed herself to be lulled into accepting peacerather than all the restas normal.

Now the steel at the core of Judiths soul, the quality that had permitted her not only to survive her long captivity on Masada, but to prosper and grow, met the urge to panic and pushed it back.

Judith closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Ruth wasnt in the apartment. Very well. Where might she be? The apartment had only one exit, but there was a safety escape outside the bedroom window. There had been a drill just a few days before. Ruth had been fascinated by how the grav tube had appeared at the touch of a button concealed in the programmable nanotech wallpaper.

Judith didnt think Ruth could have reached the button and activated it, but then again, Judith was the last person to underestimate someone merely on the basis of age. If her former husband had not underestimated Judith

But, no. She wasnt going to think about that. That, at least, was done.

Already Judiths feet were hurrying her down the hall to the bedroom. A quick glance was all she needed to see that the grav tube remained undeployed. Ruth hadnt left that way.

Panic was trying to rise again, but Judith ignored it. Grabbing her apartment keys, she hurried out to check if any of her neighbors had seen anything.

The residential tower where Judith and Ruth lived was unique even among Manticores eclectic society, for it housed most of the four hundred or so refugees who had fled in a body from the planet Masada something over two and a half years before. This alone would have made the complex peculiar, but since those refugees had been nearly all femalethe males had been small children, usually under five years of agethe dynamic was skewed again. Add to this that most of the women had been accustomed to life in communal harems. They continued to find privacy, rather than the lack thereof, unsettling. Therefore, the three floors of the tower they occupied more resembled a beehive than a modern residential community.

Judith herself was one of the few who treasured privacy and hadnt chosen to reside in a larger apartment with two or more adults and any associated children. But then Judith was different from her fellow Sisters of Barbara in many ways, including her birthplace, level of education, and complete lack of the faith thatalthough modifiedcontinued to be a dominant influence in the spiritual lives of her associates.

However, Judith still felt closer to her fellow refugees than she did to almost any Manticoran. She was especially attached to the woman to whom she now fled with her problem.

Dinah! Judith said, rushing in past Dinah and closing the door behind her. Ruth is gone from our apartment, vanished completely.

The tale poured from Judiths lips, how the doorbell had rung, how the new woman from Human Services had asked if she could speak to Judith. How Ruth had been napping, so they had stepped out into the hallway.

Dinah listened without interrupting, her gray eyes hardening to steel as the import of what Judith was telling her went home. Too old to be given the Manticorans anti-aging prolong therapies, nonetheless, Dinah had benefitted from the Manticorans advanced medical science. The heart condition that had nearly killed her during the escape from Masada had been completely reversed. Without a weak heart subtly undermining her strength, Dinah now appeared a decade or more youngera gray-haired, gray-eyed, round-figured dove rather than the haggard old woman her thirty-eight years of marriage to Ephraim Templeton had created.

I wasnt gone more than five minutes, Judith concluded. When I went back in, something seemed a little off. I went to see if Ruth had climbed out of her cribshes getting better and better at thatand she wasnt there.

You checked everywhere. Dinahs words were a comment, not a question. She knew Judith better than most, and knew she was thorough, often to the point of obsession. It was a trait that had served them both well in the past.

I did.

But you wouldnt be offended if I checked again?

No.

Good. Ill do that. You go and speak with our neighbors. Ask if they saw Ruth. Ask about that woman from Human Services, too.

Judith was thrusting her keys into Dinahs hands when the oddity of that last statement caught her.

Her? Why?

From what you told me about the questions she was asking you, I find it peculiar that she didnt come and speak with me. I have been home for the last several hours, preparing texts for tomorrows service.

Judith frowned. That omission was odd. Although Judiths skills had made the escape from Masada possible, there was no doubt who was the leader of their communityand who had been the head of the Sisterhood of Barbara before they had ever left Masada. The new woman should at least have introduced herself to Dinah.