by David Weber
"Yes, Milady, I'm afraid I do." Amusement colored Jasper's deep baritone. "At the moment, I know almost exactly where we are and what we still need. Needless to say, that's subject to change without notice until the yard turns us loose."
"Needless to say," Honor agreed, and folded her hands behind her as she surveyed the entire group. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a lot to do, and no doubt I'll get to know you all in the process. For now, I'll let you get on with whatever you were doing before my arrival interrupted, but you're all invited to dine with me at eighteen hundred, if that will be convenient."
Heads nodded as agreements were murmured, and Honor chuckled mentally. It was a rare officer who wouldn't find it "convenient" to dine with a new captain on her first day in command! She nodded a courteous dismissal, and they began to move away, but she held up a hand as Henke started to leave.
"Wait a moment, Exec. I'd appreciate it if you could join me in my quarters. We've got a lot to discuss."
"Of course, Milady," Henke murmured, and looked across the bridge. "Ms. Oselli, you have the watch."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. I have the watch," Oselli responded, and Henke followed Honor into the intraship car. The doors slid shut behind them, and the commander's formality vanished in a face-splitting grin.
"Damn, but it's good to see you again, Honor!" She flung an arm around her superior and squeezed tightly, then reached up to Nimitz. The treecat buzzed a happy purr and extended a true-hand in a handshake all their own, and she laughed. "Good to see you, too, Stinker. Still extorting celery out of your hapless companions?"
Nimitz bleeked smugly and flirted his fluffy tail, and Honor smiled back at her exec. As a rule, she disliked easy embraces, and despite her own recent elevation, she was still uncomfortable with those from the rarefied heights of the aristocracy, but Mike Henke was a rule unto herself. She never presumed upon her family's position as a cadet branch of Manticore's ruling dynasty, yet she had an unaffected ease with people and public situations Honor could only envy. They'd been roommates at Saganami Island for over three T-years, and Henke had spent hours trying to beat the fundamentals of multi-dimensional math into her shy, towering roommate, and even more hours unveiling the mysteries of etiquette and social interaction. Honor's yeoman ancestry hadn't prepared her for interaction with the nobility, and she'd often wondered if that was one reason the Academy adjutant had paired her with Henke, but whether it had been intentional or not, she knew how much Michelle's easy, breezy confidence had helped her.
"It's good to see you, too, Mike," she said simply, squeezing back briefly, then straightened as the lift stopped. Henke grinned at her, then twitched her face into properly formal lines as the door hissed open and the two of them walked down the passage to Honor's quarters.
The Marine sentry outside the captain's cabin came to attention at their approach, immaculate in green and black. Honor nodded courteously to her, then opened the hatch and waved Henke through it, only to pause as she saw her new quarters for the first time.
They were huge, she thought with a touch of awe. Her belongings had come up the day before, and MacGuiness was fussing over the treecat-sized life-support module mounted on a bulkhead. He turned and started to come to attention as he realized his captain wasn't alone, but Honor gestured for him to stand easy.
"Mac, meet Commander Henke. Mike, Senior Chief MacGuiness—my keeper." Henke chuckled, and MacGuiness shook his head resignedly. "Go on with what you're doing, Mac," Honor continued. "Commander Henke and I are old friends."
"Of course, Ma'am." MacGuiness bent back over the module, and Nimitz leapt lightly from Honors shoulder to the modules top to watch him while Honor looked around and shook her head. Her personal gear had filled her last set of quarters to the point of crowding; here, it looked almost spartan. Expensive carpet covered the decksole, and a huge painting of the original Nike's final action in the Battle of Carson dominated one bulkhead, faced from across the cabin by a state portrait of Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore. A portrait, Honor noted, which bore a striking resemblance to her own exec.
"BuShips really spoils its battlecruiser captains, doesn't it?" she murmured.
"Oh, I don't know." Henke looked around and quirked an eyebrow. "I'd say it's about right for one of your eminence, Dame Honor."
"Yeah, sure." Honor crossed to the padded seat under a view port and leaned back, staring out at the space station's irregular flank. "This," she said, "is going to take some getting used to."
"I'm sure you'll adjust," Henke replied dryly. She crossed to Honor's desk and reached out to a heat-warped golden plaque on the bulkhead. The sailplane etched into its metal had lost a wing tip, and the commander reached out to touch it gently. "This happen in Basilisk?" she asked. "Or Yeltsin?"
"Basilisk." Honor crossed her legs and shook her head. "Just missed Nimitz's module, too. We were lucky."
"Sure you were. Skill didn't have a thing to do with it," Henke agreed with another grin.
"I wouldn't go quite that far," Honor said, surprised by how easily it came out, "but honesty compels me to admit that luck did enter into it."
Henke snorted and turned back to the plaque, straightening it carefully, and Honor smiled at her back. They hadn't seen one another in far too long, and their relationship had changed, for their roles were different, but her earlier concern that the change might make them awkward with one another seemed as silly as it had been unfounded now.
The exec gave up on getting the warped plaque to hang square and turned one of the comfortable chairs to face the view port. She draped herself across it with a loose-limbed casualness that was the antithesis of Honor's economical movement and cocked her head.
"It really is good to see you again—especially looking so fit," she said quietly. "I'd heard it was a rough convalescence."
Honor made a small, throwing-away gesture. "It could have been worse. Given that I lost half my command, I sometimes think it was actually easier than I deserved," she said, and Nimitz looked up from the life-support module, ears half-flattened, as bitterness shadowed her voice despite herself.
"Now how did I know you'd say something like that?" Henke murmured with a headshake. "Some people don't change a lot, do they?"
Honor glanced at MacGuiness. "Mac, could you bring us a couple of beers?"
"Of course, Ma'am." The steward gave a last punch at the module keyboard and vanished into his pantry, and Nimitz jumped from its top to the couch beside Honor.
"All right, Madam Exec. You might as well give me your version of the pep talk," she sighed as the pantry hatch closed, and Henke frowned.
"I don't think a 'pep talk' is exactly what you need, Honor. Maybe a lick or two of common sense wouldn't hurt, though." Honor looked up, startled by her friend's suddenly astringent tone, and Henke gave her a crooked smile.
"I realize a commander isn't supposed to tell a senior grade captain she's got her head up her ass! but blaming yourself for what happened to your people—or to Admiral Courvosier—is stupid." Honor winced at Courvosier's name, and Henke's voice softened. "Sorry. I know how close you were to the Admiral, but, damn it, Honor, no one could have done better with the information you had. And didn't Admiral Courvosier always tell us no officer's performance can be accurately measured except in terms of what she knows at the moment she makes her call?'
Her eyes were stern, and Honor's mouth quirked as she remembered other lectures in a dormitory room long, long ago.
She started to reply, then paused as MacGuiness returned with their beers. He served both officers, then withdrew again, and Honor turned her stein in long fingers, staring down into it. She sighed.
"You're right, Mike. The Admiral would kick my backside up between my ears if he knew how much I blame myself for what happened to him, and I know it. Which—" she looked back up "—doesn't make it a lot easier to stop doing it. But I'm coping with it. Really."
"Good." Henke raised her beer. "Absent friends," she said softly.
"Absent friends," Honor whispered back. Glass clinked, and both women sipped, then lowered their steins almost in unison.
"In case I haven't already mentioned it," Henke went on more briskly, gesturing at the four gleaming gold rings on Honor's cuff, "I must say a captain's uniform becomes you."
"Makes me look less like an overgrown horse, you mean," Honor said wryly, relieved by the change of mood, and Henke laughed.
"If you only knew how lesser mortals envy your centimeters," she teased. "But I hope you realize I expect you to do wonderful things for my career."
"Oh? How's that?"
"Well just look at it. Both your last two execs got their own ships, and from what I hear, Alistair McKeon's getting his fourth ring next month. I just got a letter from Alice Truman, too, and she just got her first heavy cruiser. You think it's just a coincidence they all served with you? Hell, Honor—I'm not going to be satisfied with anything less than a cruiser of my own at the end of this commission!" She grinned and took another long pull at her beer, then leaned back with an expansive air.
"And now, Ma'am, before we dive into the kilometers of paperwork we both know are waiting for us, I want to hear your side of everything that's happened since the last time I saw you."
CHAPTER THREE
Rain beat on the double-paned window, and the crackling fire behind Hamish Alexander, Earl of White Haven, danced as wind sucked over the chimney top. It was an archaic, even a barbaric, way to heat a room, but then, that wasn't the real reason it had been lit. The dreary chill of an early winter not yet ready for snow had settled over White Haven, seeping into bones and spirits, and the bright, popping hiss of an open fire still worked the ancient magic at need.
The thirteenth earl leaned back in the oversized wooden chair built to the eleventh earl's special orders and studied his guest. Sir James Bowie Webster, First Space Lord of the Manticoran Admiralty, wore the black and gold of a fleet admiral, but White Haven was in mufti.
"So it's official, is it?"
"Yep." Webster sipped hot coffee, then shrugged. "Can't say he's the man I'd have chosen, but my tenure ends in two months."
White Haven gave a little grimace but nodded. It was irritating, to say the least, when someone with Webster's talent had to step down as First Space Lord, but given the long careers the prolong anti-aging treatments produced, the Navy had long ago developed a policy of rotating its senior admirals regularly to keep them current with operational realities.
Webster grinned at his friend's expression, but his eyes were serious as he continued. "Someone has to replace me, and whatever else he may be, Caparelli's got a backbone. That may be important in the next year or so."
"A real thick backbone—to match the one in his head," White Haven muttered, and Webster snorted.
"You still haven't forgiven him for kicking your ass all over the soccer field at Saganami Island, have you?" he challenged.
"Why should I?" White Haven demanded with a gleam of humor. "It was a classic example of brute force over technique, and you know it."
"Besides, it pisses you off to lose."
"And it pisses me off to lose," the earl agreed wryly, then shrugged. "Well, as you say, he's got guts. And at least he won't have to put up with Janacek."
"Amen," Webster said fervently. The recently replaced civilian head of the Navy was very low on both officers' lists of favorite people.
"But," White Haven went on after a moment, "somehow I don't think you came all the way out here just to tell me Cromarty and Baroness Morncreek have picked Caparelli."
"Perceptive as usual." Webster set his cup aside and leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees. "The fact is, Lucien Cortez is staying on as Fifth Space Lord, but Caparelli's going to want to put his own personnel policies in place, and I'm here to get your input before I sign a few midnight command assignments." He waved a hand at White Haven's raised eyebrow. "Oh, it's his prerogative to make his own personnel decisions. I certainly wanted the same thing when I took over. But he's going to be feeling his way into things for a couple of months. Given the current situation in the PRH, I want him to have a solid team in the field during the transition."
"Makes sense," White Haven acknowledged.
"Glad you think so. At any rate, I'm fairly comfortable that I've got all the round pegs in the round little holes... with a few exceptions."
"Such as?"
"Hancock Stations the most important one. That's why I wanted to talk to you," Webster said, and White Haven grunted in understanding, for he had just returned from an inspection tour of the Royal Manticoran Navy's newest and, just possibly, most critical Fleet station.
The Hancock Systems barren red dwarf had absolutely nothing to recommend it... except its location. It lay directly to galactic north of Manticore, ideally placed as an advanced picket for the systems of Yorik, Zanzibar, and Alizon, all members of the Kingdoms anti-Haven alliance. Perhaps more to the point, it was less than ten light-years from the Seaford Nine System, and Seaford Nine was one of the People's Republic of Haven's largest frontier bases. Which was very interesting, since Haven had absolutely nothing worth protecting within a good fifty light-years of it.
"Leave it to Mark Sarnow," the earl said, and Webster groaned.
"Damn it, I knew you were going to say that! He's too junior, and we both know it!"
"Junior or not, he's also the man who talked Alizon into signing up with the Alliance," White Haven countered, "not to mention having set Hancock up in the first place. And if you've read my report, you know what kind of job he's been doing out there."
"I'm not questioning his competence, only his seniority," Webster shot back. "No one admires the job he's done more than I do, but now that the yard facilities are coming on-line we're upgrading the station to a full task force. That means we need at least a vice admiral out there, and if I put a rear admiral—and a rear admiral of the red, at that!—in command, I'll have a mutiny on my hands."
"Then promote him."
"Lucien already bumped him from commodore at least two years early." Webster shook his head. "No, forget it, Hamish. Sarnow's good, but he just doesn't have the seniority for it."
"So who are you thinking of putting in?" White Haven demanded, then paused with an arrested expression. "Oh, no, Jim! Not me!"
"No." Webster sighed. "Mind you, there's no one I'd rather have out there, but even with the upgrade, it's only a vice admirals slot. Besides, I want you closer to home if the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller. No, I was thinking about Yancey Parks."
"Parks?" One of the earl's mobile eyebrows rose in surprise.
"He's almost as good a strategist as you are, and he's one hell of an organizer," Webster pointed out.
"Why do you sound like you're trying to convince yourself of that?" White Haven asked with a small smile, and Webster snorted.
"I'm not. I'm trying to convince you to agree with me."
"I don't know, Jim..." The earl rose, clasping his hands behind him, to take a quick turn around his study. He gazed out into the wet night for a moment, then wheeled to stare down at the crackling flames.
"The thing that worries me," he said without turning his head, "is that Yancey's too much of a thinker."
"Since when has that been a liability? Weren't you just objecting to Caparelli because he's not one?"
"Touche," White Haven murmured with a chuckle.
"Not only that, he's been working with BuPlan on the general buildup in the sector. He knows it backward and forward, and the first priority has to be getting Hancock fully operational."
"That's true." The earl frowned down into the fire, then shook his head. "I don't know, Jim," he repeated. "There's just something about the idea that... bothers me." His hands fisted and opened behind him a time or two, then he wheeled to face the First Space Lord. "Maybe it's just that he doesn't have enough fire in his belly. I know he's got guts, but he second-guesses himself. Oh, he's got good strategic instincts when he listens to them, but s
ometimes he over-analyzes himself right into indecision."
"I think an analyst may be exactly what we need," Webster argued, and White Haven frowned a moment longer, then snorted.
"Tell you what—give him Sarnow as a squadron commander, and I'll give you my blessings."
"Blackmail!" Webster grumbled around a grin.
"So don't pay. You don't really need my approval, Your Lordship."
"True." Webster rubbed his craggy chin, then gave a sharp nod. "Done!" he said crisply.
"Good." The earl smiled and sat back down behind his desk before going on in an unnaturally casual tone. "By the way, Jim, there was something else I'd like to speak to you about while you're here."
"Oh?" Webster sipped coffee, regarding his friend levelly over the cup's rim, then lowered it. "What might that be? No—let me guess. It wouldn't be your newest protege, Captain Harrington, would it?"
"I'd hardly call her that," White Haven objected.
"Oh? Then it must have been someone else who's been badgering Lucien and me to get her back into space," Webster said ironically.
"She was Raoul's protege, not mine. I simply happen to think she's one hell of an outstanding officer."
"Who happens to have gotten herself shot up so badly it's taken a T-year or so to put her back together."
"Oh, for God's sake!" White Haven snorted. "I haven't been monitoring her medical condition, but I've met the woman. She beat the hell out of a Peep battlecruiser that out-massed her damn nearly three-to-one after she'd been wounded! And I also know a bit about traumatic injuries, thank you." His mouth tightened, then he shook himself. "If she isn't back at a hundred percent physically by now, I'll eat my beret!"
"I can't argue with you there," Webster said pacifically, but behind his calm eyes he was surprised by the genuine anger in the earl's voice. "And as you're perfectly well aware, it's BuMed that's been throwing up the 'hold' signals. I want her back in space, Lucien wants her back in space, and you want her back in space, but they're concerned about the possibility of putting her back too quickly. They just think she may need more time."