Disclaimer: The "Honor Harrington" series is owned by David Weber. This is not intended as copyright infringement, I make no money by publishing this story. I also know that Mr. Weber frowns upon fanfiction, but since this is an AU of enormous proportions, I don't think my humble efforts contradict the reason he gave for his dislike of fans playing in his universe.
AN: I got things rolling much faster than I thought, so conflict is coming up!
Chapter 2.
Privilege
When Honor's ability to think clearly finally returned after a minute of dumbstruck agony, she opened the file containing the offending newsfax report with haste.
It had been published under the name "George Danton" - probably a pseudonym, as most crime reporters at the "Times" used one - three weeks after her parents' death, and was more a stub than an article, just a dozen sentences and a picture of the crash site near Twin Forks.
"Foul play in Harrington crash?"
The "Times" has learned that the tragic death of highly decorated local hero LieutenantAlfred Harrington and his wife Dr. Allison Chou Harrington has come under intense scrutiny by Twin Forks authorities. According to sources close to the investigation, the aircar crash that killed the two medical doctors had first been ruled by personnel in the field as the result of a pilot error.
But when constables tried to retrieve the air traffic control logs for the crash site in Sector 233A, just hours after the tragedy that left a one year old girl orphaned, they found that all data had been lost due to what officials called a "glitch in the sensor matrix".
Captain Preston Raskop, chief of the Twin Forks air- traffic bureau, called the loss of information "Very unfortunate in this case, but farely routine for outlaying areas". He asserted that "Software problems happen constantly in low traffic regions, because the system was programmed for urban environments ."
An infotech who works for Hauptman Integrated Computing, the supplier of the air- traffic system, denied Raskop's claims to this reporter under condition of anonymity. According to this source, the Captain's claims "sound spurious in the extreme for anyone who knows the software in question."
In the course of the constabulary's inquest, it transpired that not only the traffic control systems "failed" to record any data of the crash.
An optical surveillance sattelite, which the Sphinx Forestry Service uses to check on treecat clans living in the woodland underneath air control sector 233A also had a "coincidental" and unexplained four hour "gap" in its dataset around the time of the Harringtons' death.
It is a horiffic irony in the light of this unexplained "accident", that just weeks before the young pairs' untimely demise, an interesting memo (a copy is in the possession of the "Times") started to circulate in the Twin Forks air- traffic bureau.
It cautioned operators that a hightened amount of illegal races using luxury aircars were taking place in Sector 233A.
(The "Times" will keep you informed on further developments in this case)
Honor put her face into her hands and tried to calm the swirling emotions running through her head.
She couldn't remember ever feeling so much at once, from outraged hate of the person or persons responsible for her parents' death, to simmering anger at her aunt and uncle, who never told her a word about all this.
It was important to think the implications of the article through systematically and logically though, as she'd learned to do in her language classes just a few months ago.
The most important fact was that there was no actual proof of anything. The journalist had build a convincing case that something iffy had been going on, had darkly hinted that someone was working behind the scenes to surppress data that might show what really happened.
But neither the constabluary nor the reporter himself seemed to have any publishable information about the people involved, just very thin conjectures about aircar racing in the area.
At least that had been the case when the article was written, nearly six years ago, Honor realized with a jolt.
She needed to find out if there had been any follow up dispatches that hadn't been displayed in her original search for some reason.
Turning back to the workstation with ferverisly shining eyes, she started to hack new commands into the search mask, fingers flying.
"Harrington Crash" + "crime" didn't bring up any new hits and "Harrington murder" or "Harrington investigation" remained equally without result.
She ran as many combinations and synonyms as she could think of, but nothing produced any new information. Even widening the search to other newsfaxes like the "CD" and smaller outlets did no good.
When more than half an hour had past without results, Honor leaned back in her chair disappointedly.
Had someone really killed her parents, hidden the evidence and had gotten away with it? What were the investigators and this "George Danton" thinking by just letting it all go?
She sat back upright swiftly as a new idea shot through her brain.
It might've been impossible to find more info about the crash and the official inquiry directly, but what about a more roundabout approach?
Entering the name "George Danton" into the "Times" archive search spat up literally thousands of files, starting with an absurd report about a near- asphyxiation at a local burger eating contest from five years before Honor's birth.
She wasn't interested in the journalist's earlier career though, only in what he'd written after that devastating article about her mom and dad.
Jumping to the end of the extremely long listing, she found something worthwhile – albeit ominous - at long last.
"Foul play in Harrington crash?" had been "Danton's" very last piece written for the Times.
A shiver ran down her spine when she contemplated the odds of that happening purely coincidentally.
Without much hope, she began a broader search for "George Danton" at other newsfaxes and in the general net, and as she'd expected, nothing showed up. It was as if the man had left not only the "Times", but also Sphinx proper.
Or at least, he'd stopped to use his pseudonym.
Re- reading the article brought the only other name mentioned in it into Honor's focus: Captain Preston Raskop.
A few quick finger taps later, she knew that mysteriously losing important data for a possible homicide investigation hadn't hurt the man's career at all.
He was a vize- admiral now, responsible for the whole traffic control net of Sphinx's northern hemisphere. There was even a short bio of him on the bureau's own page, mostly meaningless drivel about his "dedication to the public's savety".
The text was accompanied by a portrait picture, showing a huge, red faced man in an uniform that was slightly too tight for him, standing in front of a dozen manned control stations.
Other available information on Raskop was nearly as useless as his official PR, showing him presiding over countless formal occasions, like openings of new traffic infrastructure and such.
More interesting were the articles mentioning Raskop's attendance at society events, often in company with his wife, who the 'faxes named as Circe Bonbour, second daughter of the Duke of Shadow Vale.
Honor's attention sharpened when one report mentioned that the pair's wedding "six years ago" had come "as a surprise for everyone", ostensibly because the Bonbours rarely - if ever - married commoners.
Feeling ill at ease, Honor decided that she needed more information about the Bonbours and their youngest daughter's strange union with a man who had first "lost" vital records on her parents' so called "accident" and later downplayed it by obviously lying through his teeth.
She went back to the "Times" search mask and filtered the enormous database for "Raskop" + "Circe Bonbour" + "wedding". It came back with tons of hits.
The marriage, wich had taken place in the Duke's palace near Twin Forks less than one year after her parents' death, had been a minor sensation, it seemed.
Peers from all over Sphinx had attended, and the whole event had been played in the media as romantic throwback to the hard times after the manticoran plague, when a Bonbour had last wed a yeoman's daughter for love.
She had to sift through a lot of flowery sentences to find something pertinent to what she now felt was her own "investigation", but it was there.
Dimitry Young, Earl of North Hollow, one of the few off- world guests at the celebration, had been asked by a "Times" reporter what he thought about the bride's choice of spouse.
His answer send a chill of foreboding through Honor's whole body- it read: "Sometimes, even noble families have to make sacrifices, and I imagine that after nearly losing his heir last year, the Duke wasn't prepared to renounce his daughter's titles for getting married beneath her station."
The "Times" newsie informed the readers that she found North Hollow's remarks "expectedly opaque" - the man seemed to have a reputation for nebulous comments - because she hadn't been able to turn up any information about Shadow Vale's heir having any sort of health- or other difficulties.
Honor felt that she knew what she would find when she opened a second search mask to look into the Bonbours' eldest son, and she was nearly instantly proven correct.
Pierre Bonbour, fourteen manticoran years old in 1862 PD, had been a fanatic aircar racer, who started in high speed competions all over the planet, and had reportedly earned the nickname "Hotspur" for his reckless flying.
Today, he was a Commander in His Majesty's Navy, highest authority on the light cruiser Royalist.
Her grip on the workstation tightened until her fingers went white with strain.
An air traffic control sector known for illegal racing, a lowly captain who marries the noble sister of a racing maniac nicknamed "Hotspur", after an unexplained crash in that specific sector and a total loss of data in said captains bureau... This was a smoking gun if she ever saw one!
She had to fight down an nearly irresistable impulse to jump up and run to the next constabluary station.
Being aware that all the facts she had uncovered could still be unconnected, any suspicions she had formed just results of her own bias and intense wish to clear up what happened to her mom and dad, didn't stop her urge to act on her conjecture immediately.
She took deep breaths and consciously relaxed her hands, folding them in her lap.
If there had been a conspiracy to surpress an investigation, if such old nobility as the Shadow Vales had really sunken to the perfidy of marrying their own daughter off to a corrupt traffic control Captain in order to keep their heir out of jail, then going to the Law with her thin hypothesis would be more than useless.
It would be dangerous.
And that may well be the answer to the question that had been burning away in the back of her head for the last hour. Namely, why hadn't her guardians pushed for a deeper investigation, why had they never mentioned that there was something suspicious about her parents' demise?
There must've been a very good reason for their silence, and she intended to confront them with her newly aquired knowledge as soon as she got home. Well, that was something she could actually do right now.
Honor made sure that she had copied all important articles and net addresses, then closed down the workstation.
Standing up on slightly wobbly legs, she made her way outside and back to the airbus station on autopilot.
Everything that she'd learned was running through her mind in swirling chaos as she waited for the next lift.
"George Danton" and his sudden disappearance, the deceptively distinguished Shadow Vales, even the dubious North Hollow, who she realized, must've known what had happened to hint at it in an interview.
It was infuriating her beyond words that everyone involved had come out on top, while her beloved parents lay forgotten in their graves. It wasn't just an injustice, it was anathema to everything she had been taught and believed about the rights of all people in the Star Kingdom.
She entered the next transport flying on the correct route and sat down without looking at the other passengers.
Holding her bag tightly to her chest, she leaned against the window next to her seat and stared outside, not really seeing the cityscape, but planning what she had to do next.
It would be hurtful to face her guardians over this, especially when they would be still angry with her because of yesterdays argument.
She'd never doubted that uncle John and aunt Christine loved her, didn't even wonder about it now, but they could be very stubborn people. Getting anything they knew about the "accident" out of them would be very hard after they had kept silent about it for ten years.
While her anger at them had cooled somewhat when she realized that there might've been danger involved in pushing for further inquiries, she wasn't prepared to just forgive what they'd done, or rather failed to do.
Honor dreaded fighting with her guardians, but there was no alternative to it if she wanted to learn more.
The airbus descended for another halt, and Honor's unfocused gaze wandered about a vexingly familiar landmark, springing back to it without thought.
"Down with the King!" the red letters still read, and while Honor Harrington was as disturbed by the traitorous slogan as before, she felt a very small part of her, the deeply wounded and confusingly alienated one, reacting to the rebellios sentiment, if not the content.
She looked away deliberately and pushed any out of line notions to the back of her consciousness.
A quarter of an hour later, she walked up to her family's house, dread, last minute doubts and anger waring inside her, making her steps slow down to a snails pace.
She turned the last corner and was immediately spotted by aunt Christine, who was cultivating the plants in their front garden.
The thin and diminutive blonde smiled at Honor, dimples making her face look so lovely that her niece had to fight down an impulse to smile in return.
"Honor, you're back early," Christine said happily, while she rubbed the earth and dust from her hands and went over to the place of the sidewalk where the girl had stopped walking.
When she realized that her aunt intended to give her a hug, Honor took a step back and held up her hands in a defensive gesture.
"Please Christine, I'm in no mood for your touchy feely crap."
Her aunts face fell instantly, and Honor was slightly discomfited by her own hostile tone and spontaneous use of a swearword.
She didn't talk to her guardians in this way!
But now that she stood face to face with one of the people who had lied to her over the span of nearly all her lifetime - or at least deliberately left out very important information - she felt her anger return to her in a heady rush of adrenaline, spreading pins and needles through her whole body.
"I need to talk to you and uncle John," she pressed out through clenched teeth.
When her aunt continued to just stare at her dumbfoundedly, she punctuated her meaning with an agressive "Now!", then stormed past Christine into the house.
After flinging her uniform jacket and bag onto the leather couch in the living room, Honor went off to search for her uncle.
As she'd suspected, he was at the professional workstation in his office, probably correcting student papers.
When Honor entered without so much as knocking, he was visibly startled, but she didn't give him time to get angry at her brash violation of his privacy, and flung the same words she'd used to her aunt in his face, before rushing back to the family room.
She went to one corner of the parlour, ignoring her aunt, who stood in the midst of the room, wringing her hands and still looking dazed by her niece's brazen attitude.
When she heard her uncle's heavy footsteps entering, she had to quickly wipe over her slightly watering eyes before she turned around.
John Harrington's broad face was visibly red from agitation and his blue eyes were flashing angrily.
At any other time, Honor would've backed down at the sight, but at the moment, she didn't care how enraged her uncle was, because she was sure she herself was even more furious.
"What has gotten into you, young lady?" her barked, but if he thought he could just turn the tables and guilt her into behaving like a scolded little girl, he was in error.
"I know what happened to mom and dad!" Honor cried out loud, her hands closed to fists at her sides and a few tears leaking from her eyes despite her best efforts.
Her words exploded into the room like a plasma grenade, stopping her uncle cold in his tracks.
Blinking the tears of hurt and fury away, Honor watched as her uncles flushed face turned white as a sheet, a totally poleaxed expression taking hold of his square features.
Turning to her aunt, she saw that her single sentence and the biting accusition in her tone had an even more profound effect on Christine. She had clasped her hands before her eyes, whimpering softly as if she had been struck physically.
Her uncle regained his wits first. He swallowed visibly and one could see the effort it took for him to get control of his faculties again.
Going over to his wife, he embraced the still sobbing woman and whispered something into her ear, too low for Honor to understand.
A moment later, he turned around to Honor and mustered her with an unreadable expression.
She felt her stomach role at the look, but kept hold of her anger, fanning its flames by reminding herself of all she had found out today.
"What is it you think you know about Alfred and Allison?" he asked her coldly, evidently holding a tight leash on his own emotions.
Honor felt her anger rise another notch at his behavior. Did he really think he could bluff her out, only to still keep anything she might not have uncovered from her?
She decided in one twisted second to go for the jugular, to throw any caution to the wind.
"I know that Pierre Bonbour, heir to the duchy of Shadow Vale, killed my parents during an illegal aircar race." she declared with icy precision.
Aunt Christine moaned again, and her uncle's pokerface cracked like an eggshell.
Honor was on a roll now, she could feel how all the pent up horror and distress was transformed into cold steel inside her mind, a sensation that might've disturbed her to no end in any other situation.
But not now, not today. She owed it to her parents to get to the bottom of this, and if it hurt her guardians, then so be it!
"I also know that there was an extensive coverup, including the air traffic control data, Forestry Servicesatellite images and the muzzling of the only journalist who dared to report on any of this."
The temperature in the living room felt as if it had dropped to under zero centrigade when her last word died away.
Honor folded her arms before her, clenched her jaw and pierced her uncle with a look that clearly communicated "Your turn- and better make it good!".