by David Weber
Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring" spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back.
But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.
And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.
In fact, at this moment, she was.
It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not—could not—relent or rest.
"I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget, and one day—one day, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them."
Chapter Thirty-Six
"Thank you for agreeing to see me, My Lady. I realize this is a difficult time for you."
"Don't thank me, Judah," Honor replied, standing behind her Landing mansion's desk as James MacGuiness escorted Admiral Judah Yanakov into her office. MacGuiness' composed, professional expression might have fooled a lot of people, but not someone who knew him . . . and Yanakov did. Honor tasted the Grayson admiral's concern for her steward's grief, as well as her own, and she smiled sadly, almost wistfully, as she gripped Yanakov's extended hand. "It's 'a difficult time' for a lot of people right now."
"I understand, My Lady."
Yanakov looked at her searchingly, not trying to hide his concern, and she met his gaze squarely. She was fairly certain he was one of the handful of people who'd figured out she could actually sense the emotions of those about her, although she wasn't at all sure whether he realized she could do it on her own, without Nimitz's presence. In any case, he'd never made any attempt to hide his respect and his genuine affection for her from her, and there was a clean, caring flavor to his worry about her.
Of course, there was something else, as well. She'd expected that when he requested a face-to-face meeting on such short notice.
"Have a seat," she invited, and he settled into the indicated chair, looking out with her across the waters of Jason Bay through the crystoplast wall. "Can we offer you something?" she added, and he shook his head.
"I think we're all right then, Mac," she said, looking up at MacGuiness, and the steward managed an almost normal-looking smile before he bowed slightly and withdrew. She watched him go, then turned her own attention back to the crystoplast.
There was a storm coming in, she thought, gaszing at the black clouds rolling towards the city across the angry whitecaps. A storm that mirrored the one in her own soul.
The final, official count of fatalities was still far from complete, but she knew only too well what it had been for her own family. Aside from her mother and father, the twins, and Hamish, Emily, Raoul, and Katherine, she had exactly five close surviving relatives in the Star Empire. That number would be reduced to four very soon now, because Allen Duncan—her Aunt Dominique's husband—had decided to return to Beowulf. There were too many memories on Sphinx, too much pain when he thought about his wife and all four of his children. Much as he'd come to love Manticore, he needed the comfort of his birth world and the family he had there.
Beyond him, her immediate family, her cousin Sarah, who'd suddenly become the second Countess Harrington, and Benedict and Leah Harrington, her Aunt Clarissa's surviving children, her closest living Manticoran relative was a fifth cousin. She knew how unspeakably lucky she was to still have her parents, her brother and sister, and her own children, but it was hard—hard—to feel grateful when all the rest of her family had been blotted away as brutally and completely as Black Rock Clan.
Nimitz stirred unhappily on his perch by the windows as that thought flickered across her mind, and she tasted his echo of the grief which had swept through every treecat clan on Sphinx. Honor knew, now, that Nimitz and Samantha's decision to move their own family to Grayson had been part of a deliberate, fundamental change in treecat thinking. She suspected that Samantha had played a greater role in pushing through that change than she was prepared to admit to the two-legs, but it had clearly been a reaction to the 'cats' awareness of the dangers human weaponry posed. Yet that awareness had been as close to purely intellectual as a treecat was likely to come. It had been a precaution against a threat they could theoretically envision, but not something the vast majority of them had ever expected to happen.
That had changed, now.
Frankly, Honor wouldn't have blamed the 'cats if they'd decided that what had happened to Black Rock Clan was proof their long ago ancestors had been right to have nothing to do with humans. If they'd blamed even their own humans for letting things come to such a pass in a war which was none of the treecats' affair and turned their backs on any future relationship with them.
They hadn't done that. Perhaps it was because they were so much like humans, in some ways. Or perhaps it was because they weren't—because they were such uncomplicated, straightforward people, without humanity's unfailing ability to seek someone close at hand to blame for disasters. Whatever the reason, their response had been not simply grief, not simply shock, but anger. Anger directed not at their own two-legs, but at whoever was really responsible. Cold, focused, lethal anger. Honor had always known, far better than the rest of humanity, just how dangerous a single treecat's anger could be. Now the bitter fury of the entire
species was directed to a single end, and if some people might have found the thought that a race of small, furry, flint-knapping arboreals could pose any serious threat to someone who commanded superdreadnoughts was ludicrous, Honor Alexander-Harrington did not. Perhaps that was because she was too much like a 'cat, she thought. She knew, without question or doubt, where her own anger was going to lead in the end, and so she understood the treecats only too well.
She gave herself a mental shake. She'd been wandering down dark and dangerous side roads in her own thoughts over the past few days. She wasn't alone in that—she knew that perfectly well—but she forced herself to back away from the cold iron of her own icy hatred, from the distilled essence of her vengeful fury, and concentrate once again on the more natural storm moving in across Jason Bay.
The surf would be piling higher against the seawall of the marina where her sloop Trafalgar was currently moored, she thought after a moment, and made a mental note to have someone check the boat's security. She really ought to do that herself, but there was no way she'd have time for it, even assuming Spencer or any of her other armsmen would have been prepared to let her out of the house long enough to attend to it.
That thought leaked even through the clinkers and ash of her rage and twitched the corners of her mouth in a temptation to smile. Spencer hadn't been happy about her decision to take Trafalgar out all by herself immediately after she'd finished her face-to-face briefings with Elizabeth at Mount Royal Palace. He'd tried to insist she ake at least one of her armsmen along, but she'd flatly refused. She hadn't been able to prevent him from flying top cover with no less than three sting ships, a tractor-equipped air car, and a standby SAR diver, but at least she'd been able to keep him high enough above her for her to find a shadow of the solitude she and Nimitz had needed so badly.
The weather had been blustery that day, too, if not as energetic as the Bay looked today, and it had been too long since she'd smelled saltwater and felt spray on her face. But Trafalgar's familiar motion, the kick of the wheel against her hands, and the sluicing sound of water as the sloop heeled sharply, burying her lee rail in a smother of racing white foam, while seabirds cried plaintively overhead, had reconnected her to the sea. And with that, she'd been reconnected to the continuity of life, as well. The deaths of her family, of Miranda and Farragut, and of Andrew, were not going to leave her unscarred, just as no comfort short of vengeance could ever truly slake her fury. She knew that. But her soul had been scarred before, and she'd survived. She would survive this time, too, just as she would find that vengeance, and scars and retribution were not the only things in the universe. The iodine-smelling wind, the way the loose ends of her braid whipped on its strength, the surging motion of the deck, and the song of wind slicing around the stays and humming in the mast had swept through her like the tide of life itself.
She only wished she could get her father aboard Trafalgar for a weekend.
She shook that thought aside and returned her attention to Yanakov.
"I'm always happy to see you, Judah, but given how busy everyone is just now, I rather doubt this is purely a social occasion."
"As usual, My Lady, you're right," Yanakov admitted.
"Well then, Admiral Yanakov, let's be about it," she invited, and Yanakov smiled for a moment. Then he seemed to sober again.
"The main reason I'm here, My Lady, is to say goodbye."
"Goodbye?" Honor repeated a bit blankly.
"Yes, My Lady. I've been recalled. They need me back home."
"Oh?" Honor sat up straighter.
Reports of the attack which had hit Yeltsin's Star simultaneously with the one on the Manticore Binary System were still incomplete. Transit time was under four days for a dispatch boat, as compared to the roughly six and a half between the Junction's Trevor's Star terminus and the Haven System, so she'd known for days now that the Graysons had been pounded, as well. What she was short on were details. Which wasn't surprising, really. No doubt Grayson had enough wreckage of its own that needed sorting through before it could issue anything like definitive reports.
"You've gotten a more complete report from home?" she continued, and he nodded heavily.
"I have. In fact, I brought a copy of it for you."
He slipped a chip folio out of the inside pocket of his tunic and laid it on the corner of her desk. She wasn't surprised that it had been delivered directly to her instead of coming through the Admiralty, given that she was the second ranking officer of the Grayson Space Navy, even if she was on "detached duty" to her birth star nation.
"How bad is it?" she asked quietly.
"Bad," he said flatly. "In fact, it's worse than the original estimates. Blackbird is gone, My Lady and it looks like we lost virtually a hundred percent of the workforce."
Honor's stomach muscles tightened. It wasn't a surprise, however much she might have wished the preliminary reports had been wrong. Given the dispersed architecture of the Blackbird yards, she'd at least dared to hope the attack might have been a little less effective than the one on the concentrated capacity of Hephaestus and Vulcan. At the same time, though, she'd realized that anyone who could put together an operation as conceptually daring and as brilliantly executed as the one which had cauterized the Star Empire would have recognized the differences between her targets and planned accordingly. Apparently, she had.
"They don't seem to have used as many of those graser-armed remote platforms of theirs," Yanakov continued, as if he'd heard her thoughts, "but they used a lot more missiles and kinetic strikes to compensate. According to the Office of Shipbuilding, at least ninety-six percent of the physical plant was destroyed outright or damaged beyond repair. And, as I say, personnel losses were near total."
Honor nodded, and fresh shadows gathered in her eyes. She'd been one of the major investors when Blackbird was built, and the economic loss was going to be a severe blow in a financial sense. That was totally immaterial to her, however, beside the human cost. Almost a third of the total workforce had been from Harrington Steading itself or employed by Skydomes. And over eighteen percent of those employees had been women—a stupendous percentage for patriarchal Grayson, even now.
"The only good news is that Blackbird was far enough away from the planet that we didn't take any collateral damage to the orbital habitats or farms. Or"—his eyes met hers—"to the planet itself, of course."
"Thank God for that," Honor said with soft, intense sincerity.
"We had even more new construction caught in the yards," he went on, "but we didn't have many ships in for repairs or overhaul, so at least we were spared that."
"And they want you back home to take over the system defenses," Honor said, nodding. But Yanakov shook his head.
"I'm afraid not, My Lady," he said quietly. "The latest dispatch boat from Grayson brought me direct orders from the Protector. He sent a personal message for you, as well." The Grayson admiral took another chip folio from his tunic and laid it beside the first one. "I'm sure it will explain everything in greater detail, but I wanted to tell you personally."
"Tell me what, Judah?" Honor sat back in her chair. "You're beginning to make me a little nervous, you know."
"I'm sorry, My Lady. That wasn't my intention. But"—Yanakov inhaled deeply—"I wanted to tell you myself that I've been appointed High Admiral."
For a moment, it didn't register. Then Honor's eyes widened, and she felt her head shaking in futile, instinctive rejection.
They sat in silence for several seconds until, finally, it was her turn to draw a breath.
"Wesley was out at Blackbird?" she said softly.
"Yes, My Lady. I'm sorry. He was there for a stupid, routine conference." Yanakov shook his own head, his eyes bright with mingled sorrow and anger. "Just one of those things. But I know how close the two of you were. That's why I wanted to tell you in person. And," he managed an unhappy smile, "to assure you that if you should happen to want the assignment, it's yours. After all, you're senior to me."
"Not on a bet, Judah," she replied almost instantly. "I know how much Hamish hates being tied to the Admiralty, and I know how much Wesley hated having to give up a space-going command. I don't think I'd like it any more than either of them." She shook her head again, much more firmly. "They're not getting me off a flag deck that easily! Not now, especially."
Her voice turned harsher on the last sentence, and Yanakov nodded.
"I was afraid that was what you'd say," he admitted. "I thought it might be worth a try, at least, though."
"I'd do almost anything for you, Judah," she told him. "Almost anything."
Yanakov chuckled. It sounded a bit odd—perhaps because both of them had heard so few chuckles in the last few weeks—but it also sounded remarkably natural. As if they might actually get used to hearing it again, sometime. Then he stood and extended his hand again.
"I'm afraid they want me home in a hurry, My Lady. I'm headed back aboard the same dispatch boat and it's scheduled to break Manticore orbit in less than two hours. So I'm afraid I have to say goodbye now."
"Of course."
Honor stood, but instead of taking his hand, she walked around the deck and stood facing him for perhaps two seconds. Then she put her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
She felt him stiffen instinctively, even after all these years. Which, she supposed, showed you could take the boy out of Grayson, but you couldn't take the Grayson out of the boy. But then his automatic response to being touched so intimately by a woman who was neither his wife nor his mother or sister disappeared, and he hugged her back. A bit tentatively, perhaps, but firmly.
A moment later, she stepped back, both hands on his shoulders, and smiled at him.
"I'm going to miss Wesley," she told him softly. "We're both going to miss a lot of people. And I know you don't really want the job, Judah. But I think Benjamin made the right pick."
"I hope so, My Lady. But when I think about the monumental mess we've got to clean up . . . ." He shook his head.