by David Weber
She drew a deep breath, crossed to her desk, seated herself behind it, switched on her terminal, and pretended to be studying the document upon it, then waited.
Precisely one hundred and twenty seconds from the moment she'd given him the instruction, MacGuiness opened the cabin hatch.
"Your Grace," he said, "your visitor is here."
There was something peculiar about his voice, and something even odder about his emotions, and Honor looked up sharply.
"Hello, Honor," her visitor said, and she shot up out of her chair.
"Hamish!"
She never clearly remembered stepping around her desk. She just was, and then she walked straight into his arms.
She heard a thump behind her as Samantha vaulted from Hamish's shoulder and flowed across the carpet. She tasted Nimitz's awakening and sudden delight as his mate's mind-glow reached out to him, and then Hamish's arms were about her, and hers were about him.
"Hamish," she repeated more quietly, almost wonderingly, letting her head rest on his shoulder.
"'Salamander,' indeed." Hamish's deep voice was more than a little frayed around the edges, and his arms tightened. "Damn it, woman-can't you go anywhere without somebody trying to kill you?!"
"I'm sorry," she said, never opening her eyes as she tasted his very real worry. "I'm sorry, but no one could have seen this one coming."
"I know, I know," he sighed, and his embrace loosened at last.
He put his hands on her upper arms, holding her back at arm's length, and looked deeply into her eyes. He lacked her own empathic abilities, but once again, she tasted that echo of a treecat bonding between them, and she knew she could no more conceal her innermost feelings from him than he could conceal his from her.
"Poor Honor," he said, after a moment. "Love, when we got the initial dispatches, Emily and I-" He broke off, shaking his head firmly. "Let's just say we didn't take it well. I wanted to come straight out here personally, but I was afraid of the attention I might have drawn. But then you fired Mandel, and I decided the hell with the attention I might attract. I know you, Honor. You wouldn't have brought the hammer down that hard on him unless he was a complete and utter idiot and you felt an overriding urgency to get someone competent to replace him, or unless you were really, really hurting. In either case, I needed to be here."
"I suppose it was a bit of each," she admitted, stepping back and linking her arm through his. She urged him across the cabin, and the two of them sat side by side on the couch, leaning comfortably against one another.
"I am hurting, badly," she said quietly. "Not just over Simon. Not even mostly over him, in some ways. Tim-"
She broke off, biting her lip, her vision misting, remembering how vehemently she had rejected Mercedes Brigham's suggestion that perhaps she should be thinking about filling the hole in her staff Mears death had left. But no admiral was required to have a flag lieutenant, and Honor refused to replace him. It might not be the most rational decision she'd ever made, but she had no intention of changing her mind.
"I'm hurting," she repeated. "And I will be, for a long time. But I honestly believe that it was mostly because he was such a square peg in a round hole."
"From the tone of your dispatches-and, frankly, his report to Pat Givens-I sort of figured it was something like that," he said. "Although, I understand Mandel really does have a reputation as an effective investigator.
"I don't doubt he does," she said. "In fact, tobe scrupulously fair, which I really don't want to, I imagine he really is very good at what he does... under more normal circumstances. But in this instance, he's simply not the man for the job. Maybe he's too experienced. It's like... like he's got some sort of tunnel vision. He knows what he knows, and he's going to focus in on that and get the job done without any distractions from amateurs who don't know their ass from their elbow about criminal investigations."
Hamish quirked one eyebrow at her language.
"You are pissed," he observed.
"Frustrated," she corrected. "Well, and maybe pissed off because he made me so frustrated. But he wouldn't believe me when I told him Tim was being compelled somehow, and he wasn't ready to believe Nimitz was smart enough to recognize what was going on-assuming a 'cat really had any sort of telempathic ability in the first place-or to tell anyone anything sensible if he could recognize it."
"Jesus, he managed to step on all your sore toes, didn't he?"
"Just about," she admitted, smiling faintly at the humor in his voice. "But he was so fixated on the notion that my sense of guilt was making me believe the best about Tim that he wasn't paying any attention to what I was telling him about what really happened. And he wasn't about to change his mind, either. I could tell."
She tapped her temple with her right forefinger, grimacing wryly, and he nodded.
"I figured that was what it was. And I imagine from what you're saying you weren't about to tell him you'd sensed what was happening?"
Honor simply snorted, and he chuckled without much humor.
"Frankly, I'm just as glad you didn't. I'd like you to go on holding that little ability in reserve for as long as you can. Let people think Nimitz is the one doing the sensing. It never hurts to be underestimated in some ways."
"I know. Not to mention the fact that I don't want people to think I'm some sort of mind-reading, privacy-invading freak."
"Um."
Hamish gazed into space for a few moments, then looked back at her.
"I don't doubt a single thing you've said," he told her, "but I've got to tell you, I viewed the same footage from the bridge visuals." His face tightened. "It scared the shit out of me, too, even though I knew you hadn't been hurt before they ever showed it to me."
He shook his head, jaw muscles bunching for a second, and she slipped her arm around him and squeezed tightly.
"But the point I was going to make," he continued more normally after a couple of heartbeats, "was that watching what happened, I can see why someone who didn't realize how you can get inside somebody else's head would discount the possibility that Lieutenant Mears was trying to stop himself. He moved so fast, Honor. So smoothly. As if he'd not only planned out what he was going to do, but actually rehearsed it ahead of time. I don't know if you really realize sometimes just how fast your own reflexes are, but you killed him just fractions of a second before he would have killed you. And I don't think anyone else could have done it, trick finger or not."
Honor looked down at her gloved left hand.
"I know it was fast," she said. "If I'd had even a fraction of a second more warning-if I'd been able to do more than just shout Simon's name-we might...."
She stopped and made herself inhale.
"I'll always wonder if it would have been better not to shout," she said, admitting to Hamish what she wasn't certain she would have been able to admit only to herself. "Did I distract him? Did I make him look at me, in exactly the wrong direction, when he might have seen something, noticed something?" She looked into Hamish's eyes. "Did I get him killed?"
"No." Hamish shook his head firmly. "Yes, you may have distracted him, but distracted him from what? From watching a young man he'd seen literally thousands of times walk into Flag Bridge on a perfectly legitimate errand?" He shook his head again. "Not even a Grayson armsman would have expected anything like this, love."
"But he was my friend," Honor half-whispered. "I... loved him."
"I know."
It was Hamish's turn to squeeze her, and she leaned into his embrace.
"Nonetheless," he went on, "the fact that you had to so little warning suggests a couple of things to me."
"Such as?"
"First, there's no way he was a Peep agent. He never could've concealed that from you-or Nimitz-for this long. Second, whatever happened to him, he hadn't been personality adjusted."
"Why not? I mean, why can you be so confident of that?"
"Partly because Mandel, however pigheaded you may've found him, was right. Adjustme
nt takes time-lots of time, even without the safeguards built into our military security protocols. And partly because someone who's been adjusted knows he has. On some level, he's aware of the fact that he's not fully in control of his own actions. In fact, I made a quick flight out to your parent's house on Sphinx with Samantha and had her consult the Bright Water memory singers about the attempted assassination of Queen Adrienne."
"You know, I'd actually forgotten about that," Honor said in a chagrined voice.
"You've been under a lot of stress," Hamish told her. "But Samantha got the memory song of the entire episode. She says the assassin knew what was happening to him from the moment he came into Seeker of Dream's mental reach. It wasn't like... turning on a switch. Seeker of Dreams picked him up before he ever got into visual range of the Princess, and he knew there was something badly wrong the instant he tasted the assassin's mind-glow. That wasn't the case here."
"No, it wasn't," Honor agreed. "He was perfectly cheerful when he stepped through the hatch. Everything was normal, exactly the way it always was. And then, suddenly, he went for Simon's pulser."
"So he wasn't adjusted," Hamish said thoughtfully, "but he was programmed."
"I suppose you could say that. But how could that be done?" Honor shook her head. "That's what I keep coming back to, again and again. How in the name of God could someone program another human being that way without the human in question even being aware it had happened?"
"I don't know the answer to that one," Hamish said grimly, "but here's another one. Why did it happen now? Why not before this?"
"You're suggesting whatever was done to him was done during his last trip to Manticore?"
"It seems likely, although CID's been over his entire visit with a fine tooth comb without finding anything out of the ordinary. And leaving that point aside for the moment, why that moment, in that place? Why not in a staff meeting, or when you invited him to dinner?"
"Opportunity, maybe," Honor said thoughtfully. He looked at her, and she shrugged. "I think it was the first time he and I and a single armsman were in the same place at the same time. Or, at least, when there was a single armsman he had a legitimate reason to come within arm's length of so naturally that not even a Grayson armsman would think it was anything out of the ordinary."
"And why would that be significant?"
"Because," she said grimly, "my armsmen are the only people constantly in my presence who're armed. To kill me, he first had to have a weapon, and, secondly, he had to... disable my bodyguard. By taking Simon's weapon the way he did, he accomplished both."
"I see." Hamish frowned, then shrugged. "You may be onto something there. I don't know. But I do know where something like this happened before."
"Where-Oh! Colonel Hofschulte!"
"Exactly. Pat Givens has already sent a message to the Andermani requesting all their case files on Hofschulte, because it sounds like exactly the same thing. A totally trusted, totally loyal, longtime retainer who just suddenly snapped and tried to kill Prince Huang and his entire family. My understanding is that they very carefully considered the possibility of adjustment, but that Hofschulte was never out of sight long enough for that to happen. Which, again, sounds exactly like what happened here."
"But why should the Havenites have tried to kill the Andermani Crown Prince?" Honor asked in puzzlement.
"That I can't tell you," Hamish admitted. "I just know the modus operandi appears to be extremely similar. I can see some possible advantages for them, I suppose, in killing him now that they're at war with the Andies as well as us, but then?" He shook his head. "Of course, StateSec was still running their entire intelligence machine at that point. Maybe they did have some sort of motive we just can't see from here."
"That's hard to imagine," Honor said thoughtfully. "I wonder...."
"Wonder what?" Hamish asked after a few seconds.
"What? Oh!" Honor gave herself a shake. "I was just wondering if there's someone else out there, someone who's developed a technique that would let them do something like this, and made it available on a hire basis?"
"Possible." Hamish considered. "Quite possible, really. Because I can't think of anyone besides the Peeps who'd have both the motive and the resources to pull something like this off."
"I can't either," Honor agreed, but her expression was troubled.
Yes, assassination had always been a favorite tactic of the People's Republic, whether it was being run by InSec or StateSec. But it wasn't the sort of tactic she would have associated with Thomas Theisman. On the other hand, Eloise Pritchart had come up through the Havenite Resistance, and her Aprilists had been credited with several dozen assassinations of key Legislaturalists and InSec personnel. And however Honor wanted to look at it, she, as the commander of the Allied fleet which had done the most damage to the Republic's civilians, as well as its military, was clearly a legitimate military target.
And assassination didn't kill anyone deader than a bomb-pumped laser.
"Well," Hamish said finally, "one of the reasons I came out was to tell you that, although Pat would appreciate it if you'd go through channels next time, if you want Mandel out of the picture, he's gone. And she intimated to me that if he'd gotten out of line, instead of simply being dumb as a post, she'd see to it he was for the long drop, as well."
"No." Honor shook her head. "No, as much as the nasty side of me would like to see that happen, it really was just a matter of his being... unresponsive to novel hypotheses."
"My, what a diplomatic way to put it," her husband murmured. Then he grinned crookedly. "Her second question was whether or not this Commander Simon was acceptable to you?"
"She is. Just speaking to her is like prodding a wound with your finger, because of her name, but she's much more open-minded then Mandel. I don't say she agrees with me-yet, at least-but she hasn't ruled the possibility out. And she hasn't already wedded herself to some theory of her own. And she apparently does believe what the xenologists have been saying about the 'cats and their abilities for the past few years."
"Good, because in that case, I want Samantha to talk to her. I don't suppose we're lucky enough that she reads sign?"
"No, she doesn't."
"Pity. In that case, I'll just have to translate, I suppose." Hamish shrugged. "It may be an interesting conversation, especially when Samantha tells her about the memory song about Queen Adrienne. And at least I'll feel like I'm actually doing something about the bastards who tried to murder my wife."
His voice hardened on the last sentence, and she felt the fury-and fear-behind it.
"They may've tried, and they may have killed a lot of other people, but they didn't kill me, and they aren't going to," she promised him, reaching up to touch the side of his face with her right hand.
"Not with assassins, anyway," Hamish said with a slightly strained smile. "Not with both you and your furry shadow watching out for them."
Honor smiled back, then stiffened.
"That's it," she said softly.
"'It' what?" he asked when she didn't say anything else immediately.
"It's just that if there is some new assassination technology out there, something they used to get to Tim without his disappearing long enough to be adjusted, then they could do it to anyone. Which means literally anybody could be a programmed assassin, without even realizing it."
"Talk about your security nightmares," Hamish muttered, and she nodded grimly.
"But at the moment whatever the programming is kicks in, they do know someone or something else is controlling them," she said, "and no treecat could miss something like that."
"Like food tasters," Hamish said slowly. "Or canaries in coal mines back on Old Earth."
"More or less," she agreed. "It wouldn't be much warning, but at least it would be some. And if the security types guarding the intended target knew to take their cue from the 'cat, it might be enough."
"Palace Security and the Queen's Own have been paying attention to treecats
for centuries now," Hamish said. "They, at least, won't have any problems with the idea."
"No, and you need to get Dr. Arf and her commission involved in this. It's exactly the sort of thing she's been looking for, and she's already in position to coordinate with all the 'cat clans to come up with volunteers. We can't put treecats everywhere-there aren't enough of them, even if they were all prepared or mentally equipped to work that closely with so many humans in such proximity-but with her help, we can probably cover most of the major ministerial targets, for example."
"An excellent notion," Hamish approved, then smiled at her in quite a different way.