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Allison took several minutes to examine the office carefully, but only a part of her attention was on desks and coffee tables and credenzas. She was thinking about her sixty years in the Star Kingdom and rubbing gleeful mental hands together as she contemplated yet more worlds, literally, to conquer.
Allison Harrington knew perfectly well how the rest of the galaxy regarded those libertine Beowulfans. She sometimes wondered just how her home world had ended up as the uncontested holder of the Galaxy's Most Decadent Planet Title, given that Old Earth, for one, was every bit as sophisticated and "libertine" as Beowulf, but the universe worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was because of Sigma Draconis' unrivaled reputation in the life sciences. Beowulf’s invention of the prolong process was only the most spectacular of its contributions to the health and longevity of the human race, which meant Dr. Harrington’s home world had produced a direct impact on every human being anywhere, second only to that of Old Earth herself, so perhaps it was inevitable that natives of Beowulf should somehow acquire larger-than-life status in the eyes of out-worlders. Which still didn't explain why everyone had fastened on the planets sexual practices instead of, say, Sigma Draconis' systemwide passion for grav-ski polo!
But whatever the reasons, Allison had known she would be entering another world, figuratively, as well as literally, when she fell in love with a scholarship student at Semmelweiss University named Alfred Harrington. Alfred had hardly been an untutored, gawking yokel, of course. The Star Kingdom had been one of the wealthiest, most technically advanced interstellar powers, certainly of those outside the Solarian League, for centuries, and its capital planet was probably as sophisticated as Beowulf itself. But Alfred wasn't from the planet of Manticore; he was from Sphinx, and Sphinx was undoubtedly the most straitlaced of the three habitable worlds of the Manticore Binary System. He'd been almost painfully earnest in explaining that to her, not because he wanted her to change to satisfy his home world's sometimes parochial standards, but because he was on a military scholarship that committed him to a minimum of fifteen years naval service. He would have no choice but to return to the Star Kingdom to fulfill that commitment, so if she accepted his proposal of marriage, she was going to find herself confronting the society from which he sprang.
If he'd been one bit less earnest, she would have smiled, patted him on the head, and assured him that she was all grown up. As it was, she'd been too touched by his concern to let her amusement show, and she'd assured him with admirable gravity that she appreciated his warning and that, yes, she believed she could survive in the boondocks if she truly had to.
And, of course, things hadn't proven nearly as onerous as one might have feared from his descriptions. The fact was that Beowulfans were no more "libertine" than anyone else; they simply declined to pass judgment or declare that any single lifestyle, regardless of who sanctioned it, was the one true way, and Allison would never have accepted Alfred’s proposal if she'd had any intention of pursuing a lifestyle which would distress him. Nor would she have accepted it if she'd believed he would expect her to squeeze herself into one which distressed her. That didn't prevent her from feeling that Sphinxians were much too sexually repressed, nor had it kept her from worrying, a lot, over Honors total lack of a sex life prior to Paul Tankersley, but she'd never felt any actual temptation to be anything but monogamous.
Not that she'd exactly gone out of the way to make that fact public. The mere fact that she was from, gasp!, Beowulf had been enough to earn her sidelong glances from the more puritanical of Sphinx's populace, and her mischievous streak had been totally unable to overlook the possibilities that offered. After almost seventy years honing her skills, she could play a prude like a Stradivarius, and she took a devilish delight in doing so. It was so much fun to play to their prejudices and stereotypes and come as close as she possibly could to the edge without ever quite stepping over it. Besides, as a physician, she owed it to her critics. A little apoplexy from time to time elevated the pulse and improved the circulatory system.
Of course, she wouldn't dream of doing anything to embarrass Honor, well, not seriously, anyway. A little embarrassment would probably be good for her. Following Paul's death and Honor's duel with Pavel Young, Allison had finally found out about the episode at the Academy which had done Honors self-image such crippling damage. She understood a lot of things which her own upbringing, and Honors reticence, had prevented her from seeing at the time, but her daughter still seemed far too serious and emotionally detached. Paul had been dead for over five T-years after all, and deeply as he and Honor had loved one another, it was time she got on with her life. So if she needed something to shake her up a little, well, it was a mothers duty to look out for her daughter, wasn't it?
And if Sphinx had looked at her askance for being from Beowulf, she could just imagine how Honor's Graysons were going to approach her! She was pleased that Miranda, at least, seemed comfortable around her, because she'd already realized how critical Miranda was, despite her official title of "maid", to the functioning of Harrington House and the entire steading. If someone that important to Honor hadn't been comfortable with her, Allison would have expended however much effort it took to put her at ease. As it was, she rather suspected she would find it easy to enlist Miranda as an ally and an accomplice when she began her assault on the rest of Grayson.
And, she thought almost dreamily, with Honor back in space, just think of all the time she'd have to do it right.
But that brought another point back to her mind, and she seated herself in the comfortable chair behind the desk and waved Miranda into the one facing her across the coffee table. Farragut flowed up into the Grayson woman's lap as soon as she was seated, and Allison smiled wryly.
"I remember when Honor first brought Nimitz home," she said. "You might not believe it to look at her now, but her growth spurt came late, and third-generation prolong slows things down even more. She was, oh, sixteen, I think, before she started shooting up, and when Nimitz first adopted her, he was almost as long as she was. But she insisted on carrying him everywhere. For a while, I thought his legs were going to atrophy completely!"
"Farragut isn't quite that bad, My Lady," Miranda said with a smile, rubbing his ears while he purred loudly.
"No, he isn't," Allison agreed. "Or not yet, anyway. Treecats are a shamelessly hedonistic lot, though, so watch yourself."
"I will, My Lady," Miranda promised with a smile, and Allison tipped her chair back.
"I'd like you to do me a favor, Miranda," she said. "Well, two of them, actually."
"Of course, My Lady. What are they?"
"The first is to cut back on the 'My Ladies,'" Allison said, and grinned impishly at Miranda’s expression. "Oh, I'm not offended or anything. It's just that I've spent all my life as a commoner. I realize Honors gone and changed all that as far as you folks here on Grayson are concerned, but I keep wondering who you're actually talking to!"
Miranda gazed at her for a moment, then leaned back in her own chair and crossed her legs, cradling Farragut against her chest.
"That's may be harder than you think, M— Doctor," she said finally. "Your daughter is a steadholder, the first female steadholder ever, and the modes of address for steadholders and their families are part of the bedrock of Grayson's formal etiquette. Of course, we've had to make some adaptations. Before Lady Harrington, the only proper address for a steadholder was 'My Lord,' so that had to change, but getting people to change the rest of it..." She shook her head. "Let's just say that Graysons can be a little stubborn, Doctor."
"If it won't sprain your tongue, you might try 'Allison' or even 'Alley,' at least when there's just the two of us and we're off-duty," Allison pointed out. Miranda colored slightly at her astringent tone, but then she smiled and Allison smiled back. "And I do believe I've heard a little something about Grayson stubbornness from Honor. Which," she added with some asperity, "is a case of the pot calling the kettle black! But I figure if you're not any stubborner than she is, and if we start gradually and work at it steadily, we should have even Graysons properly reprogrammed in, oh, a century or so."
Miranda surprised herself with a laugh, and Allison grinned at her. But then her grin faded, and she let her chair come upright to lean forward and rest her elbows on her new desk while she looked at Miranda intently.
"As for the second favor," she said in a much more serious voice, "I wonder if you could tell me why Honor left so much sooner than planned."
"I beg your pardon, M— Allison?"
"You did that very well," Allison complimented her.
"Did what?" Miranda asked.
"Sounded totally surprised by the question," Allison explained, and this time Mirandas blush was dark. "Aha! There was something, wasn't there?"
"Not really," Miranda said. "Or, at least, not anything she discussed with me."
"'Discussed'?" Allison repeated, and in that moment she sounded very like her daughter. They both had that habit of pouncing on the most important parts of any sentence, Miranda thought, and wondered exactly what she could, or, for that matter, should, say without violating her Steadholder's confidence. The fact that Lady Harrington had never actually said a word to her about it only made the decision harder, and she bent to press her cheek against Farragut's head while she considered it.
"My Lady," she said finally, in a formal tone, "I'm your daughters personal maid. As much as Lord Clinkscales, or my brother Andrew, I have an obligation to respect and guard her confidence from anyone, even her mother."
The seriousness of her response widened Allison’s eyes. It confirmed her already high opinion of Miranda’s integrity, but it also suggested that there had, indeed, been a reason for Honors sudden departure. She'd suspected there must have, for she knew how much Honor had looked forward to welcoming her to Grayson and personally showing her around the clinic. The fact that Honor hadn't written to warn her that she would be away was only another sign that whatever had happened must have come up suddenly, but as she gazed at Miranda’s face, she realized that she wasn't going to discover what it had been from her daughter's maid.
"All right, Miranda," she said after several seconds. "I won't press you about it, and thank you for your loyalty to Honor." Miranda nodded slightly, the gesture thanks more for the promise not to push her than for the implicit compliment, and Allison nodded back, then stood.
"In the meantime, however," she said briskly, "I understand we're supposed to join Lord Clinkscales and his wives for dinner this evening?"
"Yes, M— Allison. And I hope you won't be offended, but I simply wouldn't dare address you by name in front of Lord Clinkscales." Miranda feigned a shiver of terror, and Allison laughed.
"Oh, don't worry about that, dear! I had something else in mind."
"Oh?" Miranda cocked her head as her guests tone rang warning bells, and Allison smiled wickedly.
"Certainly. You see, I haven't had time to as much as try on a Grayson gown, so I'm going to have to choose something to wear from my Manticoran wardrobe, and I need advice." A sort of wary consternation crept into Miranda’s expression, and Allison's smile grew broader and still more wicked. "I'm afraid styles are just a bit different back home," she went on in an artfully worried voice, "but I did manage to find a few formal gowns before I left. Do you think I should wear the backless one with the V-neckline, or the one slit to the hip?"
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Allison Harrington knew perfectly well how the rest of the galaxy regarded those libertine Beowulfans. She sometimes wondered just how her home world had ended up as the uncontested holder of the Galaxy's Most Decadent Planet Title, given that Old Earth, for one, was every bit as sophisticated and "libertine" as Beowulf, but the universe worked in mysterious ways. Perhaps it was because of Sigma Draconis' unrivaled reputation in the life sciences. Beowulf’s invention of the prolong process was only the most spectacular of its contributions to the health and longevity of the human race, which meant Dr. Harrington’s home world had produced a direct impact on every human being anywhere, second only to that of Old Earth herself, so perhaps it was inevitable that natives of Beowulf should somehow acquire larger-than-life status in the eyes of out-worlders. Which still didn't explain why everyone had fastened on the planets sexual practices instead of, say, Sigma Draconis' systemwide passion for grav-ski polo!
But whatever the reasons, Allison had known she would be entering another world, figuratively, as well as literally, when she fell in love with a scholarship student at Semmelweiss University named Alfred Harrington. Alfred had hardly been an untutored, gawking yokel, of course. The Star Kingdom had been one of the wealthiest, most technically advanced interstellar powers, certainly of those outside the Solarian League, for centuries, and its capital planet was probably as sophisticated as Beowulf itself. But Alfred wasn't from the planet of Manticore; he was from Sphinx, and Sphinx was undoubtedly the most straitlaced of the three habitable worlds of the Manticore Binary System. He'd been almost painfully earnest in explaining that to her, not because he wanted her to change to satisfy his home world's sometimes parochial standards, but because he was on a military scholarship that committed him to a minimum of fifteen years naval service. He would have no choice but to return to the Star Kingdom to fulfill that commitment, so if she accepted his proposal of marriage, she was going to find herself confronting the society from which he sprang.
If he'd been one bit less earnest, she would have smiled, patted him on the head, and assured him that she was all grown up. As it was, she'd been too touched by his concern to let her amusement show, and she'd assured him with admirable gravity that she appreciated his warning and that, yes, she believed she could survive in the boondocks if she truly had to.
And, of course, things hadn't proven nearly as onerous as one might have feared from his descriptions. The fact was that Beowulfans were no more "libertine" than anyone else; they simply declined to pass judgment or declare that any single lifestyle, regardless of who sanctioned it, was the one true way, and Allison would never have accepted Alfred’s proposal if she'd had any intention of pursuing a lifestyle which would distress him. Nor would she have accepted it if she'd believed he would expect her to squeeze herself into one which distressed her. That didn't prevent her from feeling that Sphinxians were much too sexually repressed, nor had it kept her from worrying, a lot, over Honors total lack of a sex life prior to Paul Tankersley, but she'd never felt any actual temptation to be anything but monogamous.
Not that she'd exactly gone out of the way to make that fact public. The mere fact that she was from, gasp!, Beowulf had been enough to earn her sidelong glances from the more puritanical of Sphinx's populace, and her mischievous streak had been totally unable to overlook the possibilities that offered. After almost seventy years honing her skills, she could play a prude like a Stradivarius, and she took a devilish delight in doing so. It was so much fun to play to their prejudices and stereotypes and come as close as she possibly could to the edge without ever quite stepping over it. Besides, as a physician, she owed it to her critics. A little apoplexy from time to time elevated the pulse and improved the circulatory system.
Of course, she wouldn't dream of doing anything to embarrass Honor, well, not seriously, anyway. A little embarrassment would probably be good for her. Following Paul's death and Honor's duel with Pavel Young, Allison had finally found out about the episode at the Academy which had done Honors self-image such crippling damage. She understood a lot of things which her own upbringing, and Honors reticence, had prevented her from seeing at the time, but her daughter still seemed far too serious and emotionally detached. Paul had been dead for over five T-years after all, and deeply as he and Honor had loved one another, it was time she got on with her life. So if she needed something to shake her up a little, well, it was a mothers duty to look out for her daughter, wasn't it?
And if Sphinx had looked at her askance for being from Beowulf, she could just imagine how Honor's Graysons were going to approach her! She was pleased that Miranda, at least, seemed comfortable around her, because she'd already realized how critical Miranda was, despite her official title of "maid", to the functioning of Harrington House and the entire steading. If someone that important to Honor hadn't been comfortable with her, Allison would have expended however much effort it took to put her at ease. As it was, she rather suspected she would find it easy to enlist Miranda as an ally and an accomplice when she began her assault on the rest of Grayson.
And, she thought almost dreamily, with Honor back in space, just think of all the time she'd have to do it right.
But that brought another point back to her mind, and she seated herself in the comfortable chair behind the desk and waved Miranda into the one facing her across the coffee table. Farragut flowed up into the Grayson woman's lap as soon as she was seated, and Allison smiled wryly.
"I remember when Honor first brought Nimitz home," she said. "You might not believe it to look at her now, but her growth spurt came late, and third-generation prolong slows things down even more. She was, oh, sixteen, I think, before she started shooting up, and when Nimitz first adopted her, he was almost as long as she was. But she insisted on carrying him everywhere. For a while, I thought his legs were going to atrophy completely!"
"Farragut isn't quite that bad, My Lady," Miranda said with a smile, rubbing his ears while he purred loudly.
"No, he isn't," Allison agreed. "Or not yet, anyway. Treecats are a shamelessly hedonistic lot, though, so watch yourself."
"I will, My Lady," Miranda promised with a smile, and Allison tipped her chair back.
"I'd like you to do me a favor, Miranda," she said. "Well, two of them, actually."
"Of course, My Lady. What are they?"
"The first is to cut back on the 'My Ladies,'" Allison said, and grinned impishly at Miranda’s expression. "Oh, I'm not offended or anything. It's just that I've spent all my life as a commoner. I realize Honors gone and changed all that as far as you folks here on Grayson are concerned, but I keep wondering who you're actually talking to!"
Miranda gazed at her for a moment, then leaned back in her own chair and crossed her legs, cradling Farragut against her chest.
"That's may be harder than you think, M— Doctor," she said finally. "Your daughter is a steadholder, the first female steadholder ever, and the modes of address for steadholders and their families are part of the bedrock of Grayson's formal etiquette. Of course, we've had to make some adaptations. Before Lady Harrington, the only proper address for a steadholder was 'My Lord,' so that had to change, but getting people to change the rest of it..." She shook her head. "Let's just say that Graysons can be a little stubborn, Doctor."
"If it won't sprain your tongue, you might try 'Allison' or even 'Alley,' at least when there's just the two of us and we're off-duty," Allison pointed out. Miranda colored slightly at her astringent tone, but then she smiled and Allison smiled back. "And I do believe I've heard a little something about Grayson stubbornness from Honor. Which," she added with some asperity, "is a case of the pot calling the kettle black! But I figure if you're not any stubborner than she is, and if we start gradually and work at it steadily, we should have even Graysons properly reprogrammed in, oh, a century or so."
Miranda surprised herself with a laugh, and Allison grinned at her. But then her grin faded, and she let her chair come upright to lean forward and rest her elbows on her new desk while she looked at Miranda intently.
"As for the second favor," she said in a much more serious voice, "I wonder if you could tell me why Honor left so much sooner than planned."
"I beg your pardon, M— Allison?"
"You did that very well," Allison complimented her.
"Did what?" Miranda asked.
"Sounded totally surprised by the question," Allison explained, and this time Mirandas blush was dark. "Aha! There was something, wasn't there?"
"Not really," Miranda said. "Or, at least, not anything she discussed with me."
"'Discussed'?" Allison repeated, and in that moment she sounded very like her daughter. They both had that habit of pouncing on the most important parts of any sentence, Miranda thought, and wondered exactly what she could, or, for that matter, should, say without violating her Steadholder's confidence. The fact that Lady Harrington had never actually said a word to her about it only made the decision harder, and she bent to press her cheek against Farragut's head while she considered it.
"My Lady," she said finally, in a formal tone, "I'm your daughters personal maid. As much as Lord Clinkscales, or my brother Andrew, I have an obligation to respect and guard her confidence from anyone, even her mother."
The seriousness of her response widened Allison’s eyes. It confirmed her already high opinion of Miranda’s integrity, but it also suggested that there had, indeed, been a reason for Honors sudden departure. She'd suspected there must have, for she knew how much Honor had looked forward to welcoming her to Grayson and personally showing her around the clinic. The fact that Honor hadn't written to warn her that she would be away was only another sign that whatever had happened must have come up suddenly, but as she gazed at Miranda’s face, she realized that she wasn't going to discover what it had been from her daughter's maid.
"All right, Miranda," she said after several seconds. "I won't press you about it, and thank you for your loyalty to Honor." Miranda nodded slightly, the gesture thanks more for the promise not to push her than for the implicit compliment, and Allison nodded back, then stood.
"In the meantime, however," she said briskly, "I understand we're supposed to join Lord Clinkscales and his wives for dinner this evening?"
"Yes, M— Allison. And I hope you won't be offended, but I simply wouldn't dare address you by name in front of Lord Clinkscales." Miranda feigned a shiver of terror, and Allison laughed.
"Oh, don't worry about that, dear! I had something else in mind."
"Oh?" Miranda cocked her head as her guests tone rang warning bells, and Allison smiled wickedly.
"Certainly. You see, I haven't had time to as much as try on a Grayson gown, so I'm going to have to choose something to wear from my Manticoran wardrobe, and I need advice." A sort of wary consternation crept into Miranda’s expression, and Allison's smile grew broader and still more wicked. "I'm afraid styles are just a bit different back home," she went on in an artfully worried voice, "but I did manage to find a few formal gowns before I left. Do you think I should wear the backless one with the V-neckline, or the one slit to the hip?"
Chapter Twelve
"Oh, stop moping, Mac! It's not like I'm abandoning you."
"Of course not, Milady." Senior Master Chief Steward James MacGuiness spoke with a most unusual lack of expression, and his formal choice of title was not lost upon his commodore.
Honor sighed mentally, eyeing herself in the bulkhead mirror as she adjusted her black beret. Nimitz sat on her desk, watching her preparations, and she felt his silent chuckle. He and MacGuiness were old and close friends, but the free-spirited treecat found the steward's periodic obsession with what he considered proper protocol hilarious. Neither Nimitz nor his person could ever doubt the depth of MacGuiness' attachment to Honor, but there was an undeniable edge of outraged professional jealousy in the steward’s emotions at the moment. The real reason for his formality, the equivalent, for him, of a screaming tantrum, was his indignation over the notion that someone else’s steward would be in charge of a dinner party his commodore was throwing. And, of course, the 'cat's link to Honor meant that she knew that as well as Nimitz did.
It'd be nice, sometimes, she reflected, if Mac could just figure out that I'm not a child he has to keep an eye on all the time. I got along without him for forty years, after all, and I really can take care of myself! She felt a stir, small but stubborn, of guilt at the thought and grimaced at her mirrored image. All right, so I wouldn't want to take care of myself, but honestly! There are times I could cheerfully strangle him.
"Look," she said finally, turning to face him. "There are two reasons you're not coming. First, seating's too limited on the flight over to fit you in. Second, and more to the point, we'll be going aboard Prince Adrian as Captain McKeon’s guests, and if I tried to bring you in to supervise, his steward would be just as ticked off as you'd be in his place. And I might point out that I'm only going to be gone for about eighteen hours. Whether you believe it or not, Mac, I am capable of looking after myself for that long!"
Her dark brown eyes held his, touched with a twinkle but stern, until his gaze dropped. He looked down at his toes for a moment, then cleared his throat.
"Yes, Ma'am. I, um, didn't mean to suggest you weren't."
"Oh yes you did," Honor retorted, the twinkle in her eyes more pronounced, and he grinned sheepishly. "That's better!" She punched him lightly on the shoulder, then scooped up Nimitz. "Now, having just informed you that I can manage on my own, am I presentable enough to avoid embarrassing you in public?"
"You look just fine, Ma'am," MacGuiness assured her, but he also reached out to twitch her tunic collar a bit more perfectly into position and brushed an imaginary speck of lint from her 'catless shoulder. It was Honors turn to grin, and she shook her head as he stepped back. Then she led the way into her day cabin and ran a critical eye over the trio of armsmen who would accompany her aboard Prince Adrian.
As expected, they were perfectly turned out. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless had been with Honor ever since her formal investiture as Steadholder Harrington, and although Robert Whitman had become the third man of her regular security detail little more than a year and a half ago, following Eddy Howard's death in HMS Wayfarer's final battle, LaFollet had hand-picked him for the slot. Whitman was well aware of that fact, and, if possible, he was even more brightly shined and sharply creased than either of his seniors, but all three of them would sooner be gnawed to death by Grayson neorats than let their appearance embarrass their Steadholder, and she nodded in satisfaction.
"Very nice, gentlemen," she complimented them. "Even you, Jamie. I don't think I'd be ashamed to be seen in public with any of you."
"Thank you, My Lady. We did try," LaFollet replied with straight-faced, exquisite politeness, and she chuckled.
"I'm sure you did. Got the package, Bob?"
"Yes, My Lady." Whitman held up a small, brightly wrapped box, and she nodded once more.
"In that case, gentlemen, let's be about it," she said.
The other pinnace passengers were waiting in Boat Bay Two when she arrived. At Honor's request, Alvarez was skipping formal honors, so there was no official side party, but Captain Greentree had come down to see them off.
"We won't be gone all that long, Thomas," she told him, shaking his hand.
"Of course not," he replied. "Anyway, I imagine I can mind the store for a few hours without you, My Lady."
"I imagine you can," she agreed. "Even if I am stealing your exec."
"That may make it a little harder, but I'm sure I'll survive," Greentree said dryly, and Commander Marchant smiled. He'd become much more comfortable with Honor in the last five T-weeks, as he and Greentree worked with her and her staff. Greentree’s role as Honor's tactical deputy placed an even larger than usual share of the responsibility for managing Alvarez on Marchant's shoulders, and with Honors strong approval, the flag captain had deliberately involved him in as many staff meetings as possible, as well. If anything happened to Greentree, Marchant would inherit his squadron responsibilities along with command of the flagship, and it was highly unlikely that there would be time for Honor to explain her policies or operational postures to her new flag captain if that happened. She'd been pleased by Greentree's determination to keep Marchant clearly in the picture in order to minimize the chance for confusion in such a catastrophic event, and Marchant's enforced contact with her had also given her the opportunity to evaluate his skills. She was pleased by what she'd seen... and also by the opportunity it had given her to make it clear that she didn't hold his distant relatives treason against him. He'd responded by developing not only a sure grasp of the squadron's operations but a strong personal sense of loyalty to her, as well.
"I'll try to have him home before he turns into a pumpkin," she promised Greentree now, and released his hand. Then she turned to the personnel tube and reached for the grab bar. LaFollet and her other armsmen followed immediately behind her, and were trailed in turn by Andreas Venizelos and the other members of her party, in descending order of seniority.
She swam down the tube, then swung herself gracefully into the pinnace’s internal gravity and nodded to the burly, battered-looking flight engineer.
"Good morning, Senior Chief," she greeted him.
"Morning, Ma'am," Senior Chief Harkness rumbled back. "Welcome aboard."
"Thank you," she said, and twitched the hem of her tunic straight as she headed down the aisle to her seat. Horace Harkness was more than a little senior for his present duty, but she'd known he'd be here, given who was on the flight deck.
She set Nimitz in the seat beside her and strapped herself in, then looked back over her shoulder at the rest of her party. There were quite a few of them, and Honor allowed herself a rare, lazy smile which not even Nimitz could have bettered. Poor Alistair, she gloated. If I've managed even half as well as I think I have, he doesn't have a clue what's really coming! But then her smile faded a bit. There was a downside to her arrangements, after all, for the news she had for McKeon was going to make things harder for her down the road. She knew it, yet that inconvenience paled beside her anticipation of his expression when she told him. Besides, he had it coming.
She chuckled at the thought while she watched the others settle into the truncated passenger compartment. As she'd told MacGuiness, seating was limited, for the pinnace was heavily loaded with cargo, in this case, consigned to Prince Adrian's engineer. One of the cruisers air scrubbers had failed, reducing her life-support capacity by ten percent, and although McKeon's ship had enough spares to rebuild the scrubber from scratch, if necessary, the job would take over a week without yard support. No one looked forward to the amount of sheer grunt work involved, but that was a relatively minor concern beside the lost capacity the scrubber represented. Taking it off-line had reduced Prince Adrian's environmental safety margin by thirty-three percent, and no starship skipper wanted to operate with that little reserve for an entire week if it could be helped.
And as it happened, this time it could be helped. Prince Adrian carried sufficient spare parts to repair the scrubber, but the newer, bigger Alvarez turned out to have three complete backup scrubbers tucked away in her capacious Engineering spaces. Exactly where Alvarez's chief engineer had acquired the third one (which put her above establishment) was something of a mystery, and Lieutenant Commander Sinkowitz had been a bit vague when discussing the subject, but Honor was used to the way odds and ends of extra equipment had a habit of turning up aboard ship. Alvarez's higher-volume scrubbers weren't exact matches for Prince Adrian's, but they were close enough that one of them could be adapted to replace the failed unit. Swapping them out would save at least eight days and a lot of sweat, and Greentree had offered to trade McKeon the complete scrubber for the spare parts the Manticoran ship would have used for repairs.
McKeon had been grateful for Greentree’s offer, and local hyper-space conditions had made the transfer practical, although the transport window would be brief. They were just over five days out from Clairmont, and they happened to be under impeller drive at the moment, transiting between two grav waves, which made small craft traffic practical. But the transition to the grav wave which would carry the convoy the rest of the way to its current destination would take only another two hours, after which the ships would be required to reconfigure their drives from impeller mode to Warshawski sails. Since nothing smaller than a starship mounted Warshawski sails, no small craft would be able to move between ships again after that until the convoy reentered n-space.
The Grayson and Manticoran navies shared Edward Saganami's dictum that time, as the single absolutely irreplaceable commodity any fleet possessed, was never to be wasted. Greentree and McKeon had set briskly to work to transship their engineering stores within the window they'd been offered, and when Honor had heard about it, she'd taken the opportunity to transship herself and several members of her staff, as well. Discussions with her staffers over the past two days had led her to approve a few small but significant alterations to the squadrons tactical planning, and she wanted to sit down with her second-in-command to discuss them in person. Even if she hadn't been a firm believer in face-to-face discussion, the com lag imposed by Prince Adrian's lead position would have made any sort of electronic conference impractical. And while she supposed she could have waited until they reached Adler, she had her own ulterior motive for paying a visit to Prince Adrian right now, instead. Besides, as much as she and Greentree had grown to like one another, she suspected her flag captain would feel a certain relief to have her out from underfoot for a few hours.
She was impressed by how swiftly and smoothly Alvarez's boat bay officer had coordinated the transfer, but the scrubber was big enough (and awkwardly enough shaped) that he'd been forced to close off the after two-thirds of the pinnace's modular interior to free up the cargo space to accommodate it. That had also required him to remove the seating which usually occupied that space, of course, and accounted for the cramped personnel area which had been Honors excuse to leave MacGuiness behind.
Even without the steward, seats were at a premium. In addition to the precious scrubber unit, Sinkowitz was sending along a half dozen of his own people to assist Lieutenant Commander Palliser, Prince Adrian's chief engineer, in the job of installing it. That used up a third of the available places, and Honor had quickly filled the rest. Besides her armsmen, Commander Marchant, and Venizelos, she was bringing along Fritz Montoya, Marcia McGinley, Jasper Mayhew, Anson Lethridge, and Scotty Tremaine, and she'd added Carson Clinkscales almost as an afterthought. Her flag lieutenants performance had improved markedly over the past three weeks. He remained an accident looking for a place to happen, but he was learning to anticipate and minimize disasters... and to cope with the embarrassment when they happened anyway. Yet that was when he was among superiors he'd come to know, and she'd decided it would do him good to spend a few hours with strangers. His confidence had grown steadily aboard Alvarez, and if his improved efficiency survived the visit to a new environment, it would do his overall self-image a world of good.
Besides, when it came to the ostensible purpose of her visit, Carson's inclusion was at least as logical as Montoya's. After all, there was no practical reason for the squadron's senior medical officer to sit in on a discussion of tactics... even if he did happen to be an old personal friend of Prince Adrian's CO.
The last of the passengers found a seat, and Harkness sealed the hatch. He consulted the telltales carefully, then spoke into the boom mike of his headset.
"All secure aft," he announced to the cockpit.
"Thank you, Chief," Scotty Tremaine’s voice replied. "Disengaging tube and umbilicals now."
The pinnace's hull transmitted indistinct thuds and bangs to its passengers as Tremaine unhooked from Alvarez's systems, and Harkness watched his readouts.
"Green board," he informed Tremaine after a moment. "Clear to undock."
"Undocking," Tremaine said crisply, and the mechanical docking arms retracted as Honors electronics officer drifted the pinnace free of the bay on reaction thrusters.
Honor watched through the view port, smiling at her reflection in the armorplast as the brilliantly illuminated boat bay slid away from her. At least fitting Scotty aboard hadn't been a problem. He'd made it respectfully but firmly clear at a very early date that staff officer or no, he would permit no one else to serve as Honor's small craft pilot. Given protocol's dictate that Honors seniority meant she couldn't fly herself, she was more than willing to let Tremaine have his way, since he happened to be one of the five or six best natural pilots she'd ever seen. But he and Harkness came as a matched set, so letting him onto the flight deck had also made it inevitable that the senior chief would be aboard as her flight engineer. Precisely how Harkness managed to manipulate BuPers in order to turn up wherever Tremaine went remained one of the unexplained mysteries of the Royal Manticoran Navy, and Honor wasn't about to attempt to get to the bottom of it, either. They were far too useful a pair for her to risk jinxing the magic.
The pinnace cleared the bay, and Alvarez dropped her impeller wedge long enough for a stronger kick from the pinnace's thrusters to carry it beyond its own wedge's safety perimeter. Tremaine brought his drive up quickly and smoothly, transitioning from thrusters to impellers, and the pinnace accelerated away from the flagship at well over four hundred gravities. Alvarez's wedge snapped back up behind her, and Honor leaned back in her seat as Tremaine steadied down to overtake Prince Adrian.
The flight would require the better part of the available two hours, for a pinnace's particle shielding limited its top speed to little more than 22,500 KPS more than a merchantman could pull here, and McKeon’s ship was almost nine full light-minutes ahead of Alvarez. Deep down inside, a part of Honor still resented the fact that she'd had to put someone else in that exposed position, but she'd had plenty of time to learn to accept it. Besides, she knew her resentment was silly. It was her job to command the squadron, just as it was Alistair's job to take the point position, and that was that.
Now she leaned back in her comfortable seat, one hand rubbing Nimitz’s ears while the 'cat purred contentedly in her lap, and watched the eerie, beautiful depths of hyper space flicker beyond her view port's thick armorplast.
"So what did you think of my girls' and boys' ideas?" Honor asked, raising an eyebrow at her host as the lift carried them smoothly up-ship towards his dining cabin. Prince Adrian's design was over sixty years old, one consequence of which was that her lifts were more cramped than those of newer ships, and Honor's staffers and McKeon's exec had decided with silent tact to let their seniors have the first car to themselves. Well, to themselves and Honor's armsmen, which was as close to 'to herself' as she was likely to come ever again.
"Impressive. Very impressive," McKeon replied. "That's some particularly nice work on the EW side from Scotty, and your McGinley’s done an excellent job integrating his deception plans with the extra reach of our new passive systems, too. Of course," he added in an elaborately casual tone, "we won't be able to make maximum use of either of those until we get our hands on some of the new missile pods."
"New pods?" Honors brows came back down, not in a frown, but rather in the absence of one, and her voice was cool. "What new pods would those be?"
"The low-image, top secret, burn-before-reading-classified pods with the new long-ranged, multiengined missiles," McKeon replied patiently. "You know, the ones you helped write the final specs on while you were at the WDB? Those pods."
"Oh," Honor said expressionlessly. "Those pods. And just how, Captain McKeon, do you happen to know 'those pods' even exist, much less who wrote the specs?"
"I'm a captain of the list," McKeon explained. "But back in my lowly days as a mere commander, I just happen to have been assigned to field-testing the original FTL drones' utility for light units back before the war. Playing test bed was my first big job with Madrigal, remember? And I'm still tapped into BuWeaps and BuShips. As a matter of fact, I'm still on Admiral Adcock's short list for operator input."
"His 'short list?" Honor repeated. "I didn't know he had one."
"He doesn't, officially. But the Admiral's always been a little leery of giving the back room types too free a rein. He likes to run their concepts by line officers he's worked with before and whose judgment he trusts. Nobody gets a peek unless they're cleared to whatever classification level a given proposal's been assigned, but we're outside the official loop. Which means, since no one with the WDB will ever see our reports, that we can speak frankly without worrying about retaliation."
"I see."
Honor gazed at McKeon thoughtfully. Vice Admiral of the Green Jonas Adcock, the Bureau of Weapons' commanding officer, was one of the RMN's characters. He was also one of the Navy's very few senior officers who had never received prolong, for he and his family had immigrated to the Star Kingdom from Maslow, a planet as technically backward as Pre-Alliance Grayson. Adcock had been too old to accept prolong when he arrived, but there hadn't been anything wrong with his brain. He'd graduated eighth in his Academy class, despite not having encountered a modern educational system until he was nineteen T-years old, and his career had been distinguished. Now, at an age of just over a hundred and fourteen, he was far too physically frail ever to hold a spacegoing command again, but there was still nothing wrong with his brain. He'd taken over BuWeaps eleven years before, just in time for the war, and he'd been an aggressive dynamo ever since. Indeed, he was probably the largest single reason that rationalized versions of the jeune ecole's proposals were beginning to come off the drawing boards as useable hardware.
Honor had enjoyed several far-ranging discussions with him while she'd been assigned to the Weapons Development Board, and she'd been impressed by his ability to think outside the boxes. She also liked and respected him, and, looking back with the advantage of what McKeon had just said, she realized he'd picked her brain on current operational problems even more thoroughly than she'd realized at the time. But he'd never suggested that he maintained an unofficial network of evaluators.
On the other hand, she'd been a member of the Board herself during their talks, and from what McKeon was saying, the admiral had taken pains to keep the WDB’s members from realizing that he was using line officers to critique their proposals before he signed off on them. Which, she admitted to herself, was probably wise of him, given the egos of some of the officers who'd served on the Board. Sonja Hemphill came to mind, for "Horrible Hemphill" would have been furious to find that her proposals were being independently evaluated (or, as she would no doubt have phrased it, "second-guessed") by her juniors, no matter how experienced those juniors might be. Honor wasn't certain that Hemphill would have taken overt revenge upon any junior officer rash enough to object to one of her pet projects, but the jeune ecole's leader would never, ever, have forgiven the officer in question. And other officers Honor had known most certainly would have punished any outside, unofficial evaluator who disagreed with them.
"Were you cleared to tell me about this?" she asked after a moment, and McKeon shrugged.
"He never told me not to, and I'll be very surprised if you don't start hearing from him yourself, now that you're off the Board. From what he said to me before Adrian pulled out of Manticore for Yeltsin, you really impressed him. In fact..." McKeon grinned "...he sounded a mite perplexed over how you landed on the Board in the first place. He's fond of mangling an old cliché: 'Those who can, fight; those who can't, get assigned to the WDB to figure out ways to handicap those who can.'"
"Am I to understand," Honor said, once she was certain she could keep her voice steady, "that he regards the WDB as somewhat less than effective?"
"Oh, no! Not the Board," McKeon assured her. "Only the officers who keep getting assigned to it. But you, of course, are the exception that proves the rule."
"Of course." Honor regarded him sternly for several seconds, then shook her head. "He should never have encouraged you," she observed. "You were quite bad enough before you had friends in high places."
"Like you, Your Ladyship?" McKeon’s obsequious tone would have fooled anyone who didn't know him. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless, who'd been with Honor long enough to realize that McKeon was one of her two or three closest friends, were sufficiently accustomed to his sense of humor to take it in stride. Whitman, however, had never met the captain before, and Honor felt her newest arms-man's immediate, instinctive flash of anger at McKeon’s familiarity. But she also felt him get that anger under control almost instantly as he took his cue from his fellow armsmen and Honor herself, and she smiled at him before she glanced back at McKeon and grimaced.
"Maybe in Yeltsin," she told him, only half humorously, "but it might not be very smart to let too many people back in the Star Kingdom know we're friends. I haven't been entirely rehabilitated yet, you know."
"Close enough," McKeon said, and his voice was suddenly serious. "Some idiots will always listen to assholes like Houseman or the Young’s, but the people whose brains still work are starting to figure out that your personal enemies are a batch of..."
He bit off whatever he'd been about to say, but his expression was so disgusted, and angry, that Honor reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"You're probably not the most unprejudiced judge of them," she replied in a tone whose lightness fooled neither of them, "but I like your evaluation. And Nimitz certainly agrees with you."
"An excellent judge of men, and women, is Nimitz," McKeon observed. "I always said so."
"He just likes you because you slip him celery."
"Why not? How could anyone who doesn't recognize a deeply sincere bribery attempt when he sees one possibly be a good judge of character?" McKeon grinned at her, and she shook her head sadly.
"And to think," she sighed, "that the Lords of the Admiralty saw fit to make someone of your dubious moral character a Queens officer."
"But of course, Milady!" McKeon said, grinning even more broadly as the lift came to a halt. "Surely you didn't think Nimitz was where I started bribing people, did you?"
The lift doors slid open, and Honor and McKeon headed down the passage, walking side by side and laughing while her armsmen brought up the rear.
"Of course not, Milady." Senior Master Chief Steward James MacGuiness spoke with a most unusual lack of expression, and his formal choice of title was not lost upon his commodore.
Honor sighed mentally, eyeing herself in the bulkhead mirror as she adjusted her black beret. Nimitz sat on her desk, watching her preparations, and she felt his silent chuckle. He and MacGuiness were old and close friends, but the free-spirited treecat found the steward's periodic obsession with what he considered proper protocol hilarious. Neither Nimitz nor his person could ever doubt the depth of MacGuiness' attachment to Honor, but there was an undeniable edge of outraged professional jealousy in the steward’s emotions at the moment. The real reason for his formality, the equivalent, for him, of a screaming tantrum, was his indignation over the notion that someone else’s steward would be in charge of a dinner party his commodore was throwing. And, of course, the 'cat's link to Honor meant that she knew that as well as Nimitz did.
It'd be nice, sometimes, she reflected, if Mac could just figure out that I'm not a child he has to keep an eye on all the time. I got along without him for forty years, after all, and I really can take care of myself! She felt a stir, small but stubborn, of guilt at the thought and grimaced at her mirrored image. All right, so I wouldn't want to take care of myself, but honestly! There are times I could cheerfully strangle him.
"Look," she said finally, turning to face him. "There are two reasons you're not coming. First, seating's too limited on the flight over to fit you in. Second, and more to the point, we'll be going aboard Prince Adrian as Captain McKeon’s guests, and if I tried to bring you in to supervise, his steward would be just as ticked off as you'd be in his place. And I might point out that I'm only going to be gone for about eighteen hours. Whether you believe it or not, Mac, I am capable of looking after myself for that long!"
Her dark brown eyes held his, touched with a twinkle but stern, until his gaze dropped. He looked down at his toes for a moment, then cleared his throat.
"Yes, Ma'am. I, um, didn't mean to suggest you weren't."
"Oh yes you did," Honor retorted, the twinkle in her eyes more pronounced, and he grinned sheepishly. "That's better!" She punched him lightly on the shoulder, then scooped up Nimitz. "Now, having just informed you that I can manage on my own, am I presentable enough to avoid embarrassing you in public?"
"You look just fine, Ma'am," MacGuiness assured her, but he also reached out to twitch her tunic collar a bit more perfectly into position and brushed an imaginary speck of lint from her 'catless shoulder. It was Honors turn to grin, and she shook her head as he stepped back. Then she led the way into her day cabin and ran a critical eye over the trio of armsmen who would accompany her aboard Prince Adrian.
As expected, they were perfectly turned out. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless had been with Honor ever since her formal investiture as Steadholder Harrington, and although Robert Whitman had become the third man of her regular security detail little more than a year and a half ago, following Eddy Howard's death in HMS Wayfarer's final battle, LaFollet had hand-picked him for the slot. Whitman was well aware of that fact, and, if possible, he was even more brightly shined and sharply creased than either of his seniors, but all three of them would sooner be gnawed to death by Grayson neorats than let their appearance embarrass their Steadholder, and she nodded in satisfaction.
"Very nice, gentlemen," she complimented them. "Even you, Jamie. I don't think I'd be ashamed to be seen in public with any of you."
"Thank you, My Lady. We did try," LaFollet replied with straight-faced, exquisite politeness, and she chuckled.
"I'm sure you did. Got the package, Bob?"
"Yes, My Lady." Whitman held up a small, brightly wrapped box, and she nodded once more.
"In that case, gentlemen, let's be about it," she said.
The other pinnace passengers were waiting in Boat Bay Two when she arrived. At Honor's request, Alvarez was skipping formal honors, so there was no official side party, but Captain Greentree had come down to see them off.
"We won't be gone all that long, Thomas," she told him, shaking his hand.
"Of course not," he replied. "Anyway, I imagine I can mind the store for a few hours without you, My Lady."
"I imagine you can," she agreed. "Even if I am stealing your exec."
"That may make it a little harder, but I'm sure I'll survive," Greentree said dryly, and Commander Marchant smiled. He'd become much more comfortable with Honor in the last five T-weeks, as he and Greentree worked with her and her staff. Greentree’s role as Honor's tactical deputy placed an even larger than usual share of the responsibility for managing Alvarez on Marchant's shoulders, and with Honors strong approval, the flag captain had deliberately involved him in as many staff meetings as possible, as well. If anything happened to Greentree, Marchant would inherit his squadron responsibilities along with command of the flagship, and it was highly unlikely that there would be time for Honor to explain her policies or operational postures to her new flag captain if that happened. She'd been pleased by Greentree's determination to keep Marchant clearly in the picture in order to minimize the chance for confusion in such a catastrophic event, and Marchant's enforced contact with her had also given her the opportunity to evaluate his skills. She was pleased by what she'd seen... and also by the opportunity it had given her to make it clear that she didn't hold his distant relatives treason against him. He'd responded by developing not only a sure grasp of the squadron's operations but a strong personal sense of loyalty to her, as well.
"I'll try to have him home before he turns into a pumpkin," she promised Greentree now, and released his hand. Then she turned to the personnel tube and reached for the grab bar. LaFollet and her other armsmen followed immediately behind her, and were trailed in turn by Andreas Venizelos and the other members of her party, in descending order of seniority.
She swam down the tube, then swung herself gracefully into the pinnace’s internal gravity and nodded to the burly, battered-looking flight engineer.
"Good morning, Senior Chief," she greeted him.
"Morning, Ma'am," Senior Chief Harkness rumbled back. "Welcome aboard."
"Thank you," she said, and twitched the hem of her tunic straight as she headed down the aisle to her seat. Horace Harkness was more than a little senior for his present duty, but she'd known he'd be here, given who was on the flight deck.
She set Nimitz in the seat beside her and strapped herself in, then looked back over her shoulder at the rest of her party. There were quite a few of them, and Honor allowed herself a rare, lazy smile which not even Nimitz could have bettered. Poor Alistair, she gloated. If I've managed even half as well as I think I have, he doesn't have a clue what's really coming! But then her smile faded a bit. There was a downside to her arrangements, after all, for the news she had for McKeon was going to make things harder for her down the road. She knew it, yet that inconvenience paled beside her anticipation of his expression when she told him. Besides, he had it coming.
She chuckled at the thought while she watched the others settle into the truncated passenger compartment. As she'd told MacGuiness, seating was limited, for the pinnace was heavily loaded with cargo, in this case, consigned to Prince Adrian's engineer. One of the cruisers air scrubbers had failed, reducing her life-support capacity by ten percent, and although McKeon's ship had enough spares to rebuild the scrubber from scratch, if necessary, the job would take over a week without yard support. No one looked forward to the amount of sheer grunt work involved, but that was a relatively minor concern beside the lost capacity the scrubber represented. Taking it off-line had reduced Prince Adrian's environmental safety margin by thirty-three percent, and no starship skipper wanted to operate with that little reserve for an entire week if it could be helped.
And as it happened, this time it could be helped. Prince Adrian carried sufficient spare parts to repair the scrubber, but the newer, bigger Alvarez turned out to have three complete backup scrubbers tucked away in her capacious Engineering spaces. Exactly where Alvarez's chief engineer had acquired the third one (which put her above establishment) was something of a mystery, and Lieutenant Commander Sinkowitz had been a bit vague when discussing the subject, but Honor was used to the way odds and ends of extra equipment had a habit of turning up aboard ship. Alvarez's higher-volume scrubbers weren't exact matches for Prince Adrian's, but they were close enough that one of them could be adapted to replace the failed unit. Swapping them out would save at least eight days and a lot of sweat, and Greentree had offered to trade McKeon the complete scrubber for the spare parts the Manticoran ship would have used for repairs.
McKeon had been grateful for Greentree’s offer, and local hyper-space conditions had made the transfer practical, although the transport window would be brief. They were just over five days out from Clairmont, and they happened to be under impeller drive at the moment, transiting between two grav waves, which made small craft traffic practical. But the transition to the grav wave which would carry the convoy the rest of the way to its current destination would take only another two hours, after which the ships would be required to reconfigure their drives from impeller mode to Warshawski sails. Since nothing smaller than a starship mounted Warshawski sails, no small craft would be able to move between ships again after that until the convoy reentered n-space.
The Grayson and Manticoran navies shared Edward Saganami's dictum that time, as the single absolutely irreplaceable commodity any fleet possessed, was never to be wasted. Greentree and McKeon had set briskly to work to transship their engineering stores within the window they'd been offered, and when Honor had heard about it, she'd taken the opportunity to transship herself and several members of her staff, as well. Discussions with her staffers over the past two days had led her to approve a few small but significant alterations to the squadrons tactical planning, and she wanted to sit down with her second-in-command to discuss them in person. Even if she hadn't been a firm believer in face-to-face discussion, the com lag imposed by Prince Adrian's lead position would have made any sort of electronic conference impractical. And while she supposed she could have waited until they reached Adler, she had her own ulterior motive for paying a visit to Prince Adrian right now, instead. Besides, as much as she and Greentree had grown to like one another, she suspected her flag captain would feel a certain relief to have her out from underfoot for a few hours.
She was impressed by how swiftly and smoothly Alvarez's boat bay officer had coordinated the transfer, but the scrubber was big enough (and awkwardly enough shaped) that he'd been forced to close off the after two-thirds of the pinnace's modular interior to free up the cargo space to accommodate it. That had also required him to remove the seating which usually occupied that space, of course, and accounted for the cramped personnel area which had been Honors excuse to leave MacGuiness behind.
Even without the steward, seats were at a premium. In addition to the precious scrubber unit, Sinkowitz was sending along a half dozen of his own people to assist Lieutenant Commander Palliser, Prince Adrian's chief engineer, in the job of installing it. That used up a third of the available places, and Honor had quickly filled the rest. Besides her armsmen, Commander Marchant, and Venizelos, she was bringing along Fritz Montoya, Marcia McGinley, Jasper Mayhew, Anson Lethridge, and Scotty Tremaine, and she'd added Carson Clinkscales almost as an afterthought. Her flag lieutenants performance had improved markedly over the past three weeks. He remained an accident looking for a place to happen, but he was learning to anticipate and minimize disasters... and to cope with the embarrassment when they happened anyway. Yet that was when he was among superiors he'd come to know, and she'd decided it would do him good to spend a few hours with strangers. His confidence had grown steadily aboard Alvarez, and if his improved efficiency survived the visit to a new environment, it would do his overall self-image a world of good.
Besides, when it came to the ostensible purpose of her visit, Carson's inclusion was at least as logical as Montoya's. After all, there was no practical reason for the squadron's senior medical officer to sit in on a discussion of tactics... even if he did happen to be an old personal friend of Prince Adrian's CO.
The last of the passengers found a seat, and Harkness sealed the hatch. He consulted the telltales carefully, then spoke into the boom mike of his headset.
"All secure aft," he announced to the cockpit.
"Thank you, Chief," Scotty Tremaine’s voice replied. "Disengaging tube and umbilicals now."
The pinnace's hull transmitted indistinct thuds and bangs to its passengers as Tremaine unhooked from Alvarez's systems, and Harkness watched his readouts.
"Green board," he informed Tremaine after a moment. "Clear to undock."
"Undocking," Tremaine said crisply, and the mechanical docking arms retracted as Honors electronics officer drifted the pinnace free of the bay on reaction thrusters.
Honor watched through the view port, smiling at her reflection in the armorplast as the brilliantly illuminated boat bay slid away from her. At least fitting Scotty aboard hadn't been a problem. He'd made it respectfully but firmly clear at a very early date that staff officer or no, he would permit no one else to serve as Honor's small craft pilot. Given protocol's dictate that Honors seniority meant she couldn't fly herself, she was more than willing to let Tremaine have his way, since he happened to be one of the five or six best natural pilots she'd ever seen. But he and Harkness came as a matched set, so letting him onto the flight deck had also made it inevitable that the senior chief would be aboard as her flight engineer. Precisely how Harkness managed to manipulate BuPers in order to turn up wherever Tremaine went remained one of the unexplained mysteries of the Royal Manticoran Navy, and Honor wasn't about to attempt to get to the bottom of it, either. They were far too useful a pair for her to risk jinxing the magic.
The pinnace cleared the bay, and Alvarez dropped her impeller wedge long enough for a stronger kick from the pinnace's thrusters to carry it beyond its own wedge's safety perimeter. Tremaine brought his drive up quickly and smoothly, transitioning from thrusters to impellers, and the pinnace accelerated away from the flagship at well over four hundred gravities. Alvarez's wedge snapped back up behind her, and Honor leaned back in her seat as Tremaine steadied down to overtake Prince Adrian.
The flight would require the better part of the available two hours, for a pinnace's particle shielding limited its top speed to little more than 22,500 KPS more than a merchantman could pull here, and McKeon’s ship was almost nine full light-minutes ahead of Alvarez. Deep down inside, a part of Honor still resented the fact that she'd had to put someone else in that exposed position, but she'd had plenty of time to learn to accept it. Besides, she knew her resentment was silly. It was her job to command the squadron, just as it was Alistair's job to take the point position, and that was that.
Now she leaned back in her comfortable seat, one hand rubbing Nimitz’s ears while the 'cat purred contentedly in her lap, and watched the eerie, beautiful depths of hyper space flicker beyond her view port's thick armorplast.
"So what did you think of my girls' and boys' ideas?" Honor asked, raising an eyebrow at her host as the lift carried them smoothly up-ship towards his dining cabin. Prince Adrian's design was over sixty years old, one consequence of which was that her lifts were more cramped than those of newer ships, and Honor's staffers and McKeon's exec had decided with silent tact to let their seniors have the first car to themselves. Well, to themselves and Honor's armsmen, which was as close to 'to herself' as she was likely to come ever again.
"Impressive. Very impressive," McKeon replied. "That's some particularly nice work on the EW side from Scotty, and your McGinley’s done an excellent job integrating his deception plans with the extra reach of our new passive systems, too. Of course," he added in an elaborately casual tone, "we won't be able to make maximum use of either of those until we get our hands on some of the new missile pods."
"New pods?" Honors brows came back down, not in a frown, but rather in the absence of one, and her voice was cool. "What new pods would those be?"
"The low-image, top secret, burn-before-reading-classified pods with the new long-ranged, multiengined missiles," McKeon replied patiently. "You know, the ones you helped write the final specs on while you were at the WDB? Those pods."
"Oh," Honor said expressionlessly. "Those pods. And just how, Captain McKeon, do you happen to know 'those pods' even exist, much less who wrote the specs?"
"I'm a captain of the list," McKeon explained. "But back in my lowly days as a mere commander, I just happen to have been assigned to field-testing the original FTL drones' utility for light units back before the war. Playing test bed was my first big job with Madrigal, remember? And I'm still tapped into BuWeaps and BuShips. As a matter of fact, I'm still on Admiral Adcock's short list for operator input."
"His 'short list?" Honor repeated. "I didn't know he had one."
"He doesn't, officially. But the Admiral's always been a little leery of giving the back room types too free a rein. He likes to run their concepts by line officers he's worked with before and whose judgment he trusts. Nobody gets a peek unless they're cleared to whatever classification level a given proposal's been assigned, but we're outside the official loop. Which means, since no one with the WDB will ever see our reports, that we can speak frankly without worrying about retaliation."
"I see."
Honor gazed at McKeon thoughtfully. Vice Admiral of the Green Jonas Adcock, the Bureau of Weapons' commanding officer, was one of the RMN's characters. He was also one of the Navy's very few senior officers who had never received prolong, for he and his family had immigrated to the Star Kingdom from Maslow, a planet as technically backward as Pre-Alliance Grayson. Adcock had been too old to accept prolong when he arrived, but there hadn't been anything wrong with his brain. He'd graduated eighth in his Academy class, despite not having encountered a modern educational system until he was nineteen T-years old, and his career had been distinguished. Now, at an age of just over a hundred and fourteen, he was far too physically frail ever to hold a spacegoing command again, but there was still nothing wrong with his brain. He'd taken over BuWeaps eleven years before, just in time for the war, and he'd been an aggressive dynamo ever since. Indeed, he was probably the largest single reason that rationalized versions of the jeune ecole's proposals were beginning to come off the drawing boards as useable hardware.
Honor had enjoyed several far-ranging discussions with him while she'd been assigned to the Weapons Development Board, and she'd been impressed by his ability to think outside the boxes. She also liked and respected him, and, looking back with the advantage of what McKeon had just said, she realized he'd picked her brain on current operational problems even more thoroughly than she'd realized at the time. But he'd never suggested that he maintained an unofficial network of evaluators.
On the other hand, she'd been a member of the Board herself during their talks, and from what McKeon was saying, the admiral had taken pains to keep the WDB’s members from realizing that he was using line officers to critique their proposals before he signed off on them. Which, she admitted to herself, was probably wise of him, given the egos of some of the officers who'd served on the Board. Sonja Hemphill came to mind, for "Horrible Hemphill" would have been furious to find that her proposals were being independently evaluated (or, as she would no doubt have phrased it, "second-guessed") by her juniors, no matter how experienced those juniors might be. Honor wasn't certain that Hemphill would have taken overt revenge upon any junior officer rash enough to object to one of her pet projects, but the jeune ecole's leader would never, ever, have forgiven the officer in question. And other officers Honor had known most certainly would have punished any outside, unofficial evaluator who disagreed with them.
"Were you cleared to tell me about this?" she asked after a moment, and McKeon shrugged.
"He never told me not to, and I'll be very surprised if you don't start hearing from him yourself, now that you're off the Board. From what he said to me before Adrian pulled out of Manticore for Yeltsin, you really impressed him. In fact..." McKeon grinned "...he sounded a mite perplexed over how you landed on the Board in the first place. He's fond of mangling an old cliché: 'Those who can, fight; those who can't, get assigned to the WDB to figure out ways to handicap those who can.'"
"Am I to understand," Honor said, once she was certain she could keep her voice steady, "that he regards the WDB as somewhat less than effective?"
"Oh, no! Not the Board," McKeon assured her. "Only the officers who keep getting assigned to it. But you, of course, are the exception that proves the rule."
"Of course." Honor regarded him sternly for several seconds, then shook her head. "He should never have encouraged you," she observed. "You were quite bad enough before you had friends in high places."
"Like you, Your Ladyship?" McKeon’s obsequious tone would have fooled anyone who didn't know him. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless, who'd been with Honor long enough to realize that McKeon was one of her two or three closest friends, were sufficiently accustomed to his sense of humor to take it in stride. Whitman, however, had never met the captain before, and Honor felt her newest arms-man's immediate, instinctive flash of anger at McKeon’s familiarity. But she also felt him get that anger under control almost instantly as he took his cue from his fellow armsmen and Honor herself, and she smiled at him before she glanced back at McKeon and grimaced.
"Maybe in Yeltsin," she told him, only half humorously, "but it might not be very smart to let too many people back in the Star Kingdom know we're friends. I haven't been entirely rehabilitated yet, you know."
"Close enough," McKeon said, and his voice was suddenly serious. "Some idiots will always listen to assholes like Houseman or the Young’s, but the people whose brains still work are starting to figure out that your personal enemies are a batch of..."
He bit off whatever he'd been about to say, but his expression was so disgusted, and angry, that Honor reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder.
"You're probably not the most unprejudiced judge of them," she replied in a tone whose lightness fooled neither of them, "but I like your evaluation. And Nimitz certainly agrees with you."
"An excellent judge of men, and women, is Nimitz," McKeon observed. "I always said so."
"He just likes you because you slip him celery."
"Why not? How could anyone who doesn't recognize a deeply sincere bribery attempt when he sees one possibly be a good judge of character?" McKeon grinned at her, and she shook her head sadly.
"And to think," she sighed, "that the Lords of the Admiralty saw fit to make someone of your dubious moral character a Queens officer."
"But of course, Milady!" McKeon said, grinning even more broadly as the lift came to a halt. "Surely you didn't think Nimitz was where I started bribing people, did you?"
The lift doors slid open, and Honor and McKeon headed down the passage, walking side by side and laughing while her armsmen brought up the rear.
Chapter Thirteen
Citizen Admiral Theisman walked silently into the War Room and stood watching the incoming green dot decelerate towards Enki. It was late arriving, System Control had expected it over a week ago, but delayed arrivals weren't all that unusual. Of course, an entire week was a bit excessive. In fact, a regular Navy captain who turned up that late could expect his superiors to devote several unpleasant minutes to discussing exactly why he'd been so casual about his movement orders. But no one was likely to raise any such question with the captain of this ship.
Warner Caslet had the acutely developed antennae of any staff officer, and he turned his head as he sensed Theisman’s arrival. He stood quickly and crossed to the citizen admiral, and Theisman nodded to him.
"Warner."
"Citizen Admiral." Caslet didn't ask what brought Theisman here. He simply turned back to the huge display, standing at his admiral's side with his own hands folded behind him, to watch the green bead. It barely seemed to move across the twenty-five meter holo sphere, but its velocity was almost twelve thousand kilometers per second, and it drew steadily closer to the larger blue icon that indicated Enki's position.
"ETA?" Theisman asked after a moment, his tone conversational.
"Approximately fifty minutes, Citizen Admiral. She'll reach Enki in about forty minutes, but it'll take a little longer to settle her into the designated orbit."
Theisman nodded without comment. Normally, Traffic Control for a system as busy as Barnett assigned parking orbits to ships on a "first available" basis. Far though the system had fallen from its glory days as the Republic's launch pad to conquest, there was more than enough traffic to make its management a full-time job, and controllers hated VIP ships which required special treatment. But no one was going to complain, even if Traffic Control was required to clear all other ships from the newcomers assigned orbit and a security bubble five thousand kilometers across.
Of course, Theisman thought mordantly, only an idiot would think five k-klicks actually provided any advantage. Oh, it might help against a boarding action or keep some demented crew of kamikazes from physically ramming you, but five thousand kilometers wouldn't mean diddly against a graser or an impeller-drive missile. Hell, for that matter, at five k-klicks a laser head would start out inside its attack range!
Not that I harbor any such designs, of course.
He added the last thought quickly, and then smiled with wry bitterness. He was getting even jumpier than he'd realized. Not even StateSec had yet figured out a way to bug a man's thoughts.
Someone's heels clicked on the floor behind him, and he turned to nod to Dennis LePic. The peoples commissioner nodded back and glanced at the display. Over the course of his lengthy assignment to Theisman, LePic had acquired a certain familiarity with Navy hardware. He still didn't know a thing about how the vast majority of it worked, and he continued to require expert explanations of many of the data codes attached to the various icons, but he knew enough to pick out the newly arrived dot and the ship's name displayed beside it.
"I see Citizen Committeewoman Ransom has arrived," he remarked.
"Or, to be more precise, that she will arrive in the next, ah, thirty-six minutes," Theisman replied with a glance at his chrono. "Not counting however long it takes Tepes to maneuver into her final orbit, of course."
"Of course," LePic agreed, and turned his head to give Theisman a smile that held genuine warmth. The citizen admiral's comment could have been a thinly disguised sneer, an implication that LePic was so ignorant that he needed extra explanations, but both he and Theisman knew it wasn't. That, in fact, the precision of Theisman’s correction had been a sort of shared joke... and evidence that they were comfortable enough with one another for the citizen admiral to risk what might have been misconstrued as insult by another commissioner.
Of course, it helped that LePic understood not only that most of the Navy's officers resented the Committee of Public Safety's spies but the reasons they were resented. If he'd been a regular officer, he would have resented the people's commissioners' interference, and especially the fact that political appointees with little or no military training were empowered to overrule him. That was the reason he made it a point not to interfere in Theisman's professional decisions any more than he absolutely had to.
In turn, the citizen admiral recognized a reasonable man and went out of his way to maintain as friendly a relationship as any officer was likely to manage with any commissioner. Over the last couple of years, LePic had come to suspect how Theisman and Citizen Captain Hathaway had put one over on him in the closing stages of the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin. But no one higher up had commented on it, their actions had probably saved his life as well as their own, and whatever had happened at Yeltsin, Theisman had fought stubbornly, courageously, and well at Seabring. Under the circumstances, LePic had decided to forgive the citizen admiral.
He'd also kept a closer eye on Theisman since, and along the way mutual respect had turned into something much more like friendship than LePic had any intention of admitting to his own superiors. Or, for that matter, to Theisman. Whether he liked the man or not, it was LePic's job to exert civilian control over the citizen admiral and watch for any signs of unreliability, and the people's commissioner was a man who believed both in the importance of his job and in the ultimate objectives of the Committee of Public Safety. He didn't have to like everything StateSec did under the harsh, short-term imperatives of revolutionary survival, and many of the SS's excesses disturbed him deeply, but he continued to believe. That might be growing harder to do than it once had been, but what would he have left if he ever stopped believing?
Dennis LePic was unprepared to answer that question, yet it was one reason he was so often frustrated by Theisman's dislike, no, be honest: his contempt, for politics. The Republic needed men and women like Theisman desperately. It needed them for their skill in battle and perhaps even more as counterweights, both against the reactionary elements which hungered for a return of the old regime and against the revolutionary extremists who let their zeal carry them into excess. It was LePic's duty to report Theisman's lack of revolutionary ardor, but he was uneasily aware that he'd kept his estimate of the full depth of the citizen admiral's disaffection to himself. He really shouldn't have done that, but he felt certain Theisman's loyalty to the Republic and to his own oath of allegiance would continue to overcome his lack of political awareness. It always had so far, at any rate.
Theisman returned LePic's smile with the same edge of warmth. He was unaware of the thoughts passing through the other's mind, but he'd had ample opportunity to see how much better off than many of his peers he was. He would never trust their unspoken partnership to carry LePic into any action which transgressed his own principles, but he was honestly and deeply grateful that at least he didn't have to watch his back against one of the people's commissioners who combined the suspicion of a paranoiac with the conviction that revolutionary fervor made him a better judge of strategy and operations than thirty years of naval experience. Besides, their quasifriendship meant he could actually take the risk of teasing LePic gently from time to time.
Warner Caslet had the acutely developed antennae of any staff officer, and he turned his head as he sensed Theisman’s arrival. He stood quickly and crossed to the citizen admiral, and Theisman nodded to him.
"Warner."
"Citizen Admiral." Caslet didn't ask what brought Theisman here. He simply turned back to the huge display, standing at his admiral's side with his own hands folded behind him, to watch the green bead. It barely seemed to move across the twenty-five meter holo sphere, but its velocity was almost twelve thousand kilometers per second, and it drew steadily closer to the larger blue icon that indicated Enki's position.
"ETA?" Theisman asked after a moment, his tone conversational.
"Approximately fifty minutes, Citizen Admiral. She'll reach Enki in about forty minutes, but it'll take a little longer to settle her into the designated orbit."
Theisman nodded without comment. Normally, Traffic Control for a system as busy as Barnett assigned parking orbits to ships on a "first available" basis. Far though the system had fallen from its glory days as the Republic's launch pad to conquest, there was more than enough traffic to make its management a full-time job, and controllers hated VIP ships which required special treatment. But no one was going to complain, even if Traffic Control was required to clear all other ships from the newcomers assigned orbit and a security bubble five thousand kilometers across.
Of course, Theisman thought mordantly, only an idiot would think five k-klicks actually provided any advantage. Oh, it might help against a boarding action or keep some demented crew of kamikazes from physically ramming you, but five thousand kilometers wouldn't mean diddly against a graser or an impeller-drive missile. Hell, for that matter, at five k-klicks a laser head would start out inside its attack range!
Not that I harbor any such designs, of course.
He added the last thought quickly, and then smiled with wry bitterness. He was getting even jumpier than he'd realized. Not even StateSec had yet figured out a way to bug a man's thoughts.
Someone's heels clicked on the floor behind him, and he turned to nod to Dennis LePic. The peoples commissioner nodded back and glanced at the display. Over the course of his lengthy assignment to Theisman, LePic had acquired a certain familiarity with Navy hardware. He still didn't know a thing about how the vast majority of it worked, and he continued to require expert explanations of many of the data codes attached to the various icons, but he knew enough to pick out the newly arrived dot and the ship's name displayed beside it.
"I see Citizen Committeewoman Ransom has arrived," he remarked.
"Or, to be more precise, that she will arrive in the next, ah, thirty-six minutes," Theisman replied with a glance at his chrono. "Not counting however long it takes Tepes to maneuver into her final orbit, of course."
"Of course," LePic agreed, and turned his head to give Theisman a smile that held genuine warmth. The citizen admiral's comment could have been a thinly disguised sneer, an implication that LePic was so ignorant that he needed extra explanations, but both he and Theisman knew it wasn't. That, in fact, the precision of Theisman’s correction had been a sort of shared joke... and evidence that they were comfortable enough with one another for the citizen admiral to risk what might have been misconstrued as insult by another commissioner.
Of course, it helped that LePic understood not only that most of the Navy's officers resented the Committee of Public Safety's spies but the reasons they were resented. If he'd been a regular officer, he would have resented the people's commissioners' interference, and especially the fact that political appointees with little or no military training were empowered to overrule him. That was the reason he made it a point not to interfere in Theisman's professional decisions any more than he absolutely had to.
In turn, the citizen admiral recognized a reasonable man and went out of his way to maintain as friendly a relationship as any officer was likely to manage with any commissioner. Over the last couple of years, LePic had come to suspect how Theisman and Citizen Captain Hathaway had put one over on him in the closing stages of the Fourth Battle of Yeltsin. But no one higher up had commented on it, their actions had probably saved his life as well as their own, and whatever had happened at Yeltsin, Theisman had fought stubbornly, courageously, and well at Seabring. Under the circumstances, LePic had decided to forgive the citizen admiral.
He'd also kept a closer eye on Theisman since, and along the way mutual respect had turned into something much more like friendship than LePic had any intention of admitting to his own superiors. Or, for that matter, to Theisman. Whether he liked the man or not, it was LePic's job to exert civilian control over the citizen admiral and watch for any signs of unreliability, and the people's commissioner was a man who believed both in the importance of his job and in the ultimate objectives of the Committee of Public Safety. He didn't have to like everything StateSec did under the harsh, short-term imperatives of revolutionary survival, and many of the SS's excesses disturbed him deeply, but he continued to believe. That might be growing harder to do than it once had been, but what would he have left if he ever stopped believing?
Dennis LePic was unprepared to answer that question, yet it was one reason he was so often frustrated by Theisman's dislike, no, be honest: his contempt, for politics. The Republic needed men and women like Theisman desperately. It needed them for their skill in battle and perhaps even more as counterweights, both against the reactionary elements which hungered for a return of the old regime and against the revolutionary extremists who let their zeal carry them into excess. It was LePic's duty to report Theisman's lack of revolutionary ardor, but he was uneasily aware that he'd kept his estimate of the full depth of the citizen admiral's disaffection to himself. He really shouldn't have done that, but he felt certain Theisman's loyalty to the Republic and to his own oath of allegiance would continue to overcome his lack of political awareness. It always had so far, at any rate.
Theisman returned LePic's smile with the same edge of warmth. He was unaware of the thoughts passing through the other's mind, but he'd had ample opportunity to see how much better off than many of his peers he was. He would never trust their unspoken partnership to carry LePic into any action which transgressed his own principles, but he was honestly and deeply grateful that at least he didn't have to watch his back against one of the people's commissioners who combined the suspicion of a paranoiac with the conviction that revolutionary fervor made him a better judge of strategy and operations than thirty years of naval experience. Besides, their quasifriendship meant he could actually take the risk of teasing LePic gently from time to time.