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She paused for a moment, as if drawing a mental breath, and went on in an almost mechanical voice.
"Among the prisoners we've so far identified are Prince Adrian's commander, Captain Alistair McKeon, RMN, and the commander of the escort squadron attached to the convoy which evaded our attack, Commodore Honor Harrington. We also have several of Commodore Harrington's staff officers in custody." She paused again, almost as if she found what she'd just said impossible to believe, and then her shoulders twitched in the tiniest of shrugs.
"Unless instructed otherwise, I intend to leave Citizen Captain Turner and his ship to complete the task of securing Prince Adrian and take my own command to rendezvous with the flagship in order to transfer my commissioned prisoners aboard as quickly as possible. I will continue my survey of my own damages en route to you, and hope to be able to give you a complete report on them upon my arrival. Citizen Commissioner Kuttner has been informed of my intentions and endorsed them. Zachary, clear."
The screen blanked briefly once more, and Bogdanovich's image reappeared. The chief of staffs eyes sparkled, and Tourville felt a huge grin spread across his face. He knew his excitement and delight were out of keeping with the addition of a mere heavy cruiser to the eleven prizes his ships had already taken in Adler, even if the cruiser in question did belong to the navy which had kicked the PN's butt regularly for six years now, but he didn't really care.
"Harrington," he murmured. "Harrington, by God!"
"Yes, Sir! I mean, yes, Citizen Rear Admiral!"
Bogdanovich returned his grin with interest, and Tourville tipped his chair back and crossed his legs. His smile turned almost dreamy, and he drew a cigar from his breast pocket. Affectation or not, there would never be a more appropriate moment for one.
Harrington, he thought. First Adler, and now Harrington!
He unwrapped the cigar, nipped its end off with strong, white teeth, then lit it with finicky precision while his mind considered what Public Information would do with this bit of news. A mere commodore shouldn't have been all that big a catch, especially not against the galaxy of Republican vice admirals and admirals the Manties had bagged. But there was nothing "mere" about this particular commodore. Honor Harrington was one of the bogeymen of the People’s Navy. She'd come to epitomize the vast gulf between the capabilities of the RMN and the People's Navy, and Tourville savored the sense of having taken a large first step to bridge that gulf. For all its small scale, his success at Adler was the most one-sided defeat the Manties had suffered in five hundred T-years, and their people would realize that just as clearly as Tourville did. That was probably already more than Citizen Admiral Theisman had dared hope for when he sent Tourville out, but now, as an unexpected bonus, ships under his command had also captured Harrington.
He allowed himself to consider the consequences of his triumph for several more seconds, but then he blew a cloud of smoke and made himself come back to ground. There was a certain danger bound up in his success, he reflected. For one thing, it was damned likely to get him promoted, and that was bad. He'd prospered so far by avoiding the higher rank which would take him away from the independent commands he loved, on the one hand, and expose him to the risk of being made an example for failure that went with fleet command, on the other. But if Public Information poured it on too thick and heavy, the Navy would have little choice but to offer him promotion, and he could hardly escape it once it had been offered.
Any navy, even one whose high command languished in the grip of revolutionary fervor, had a simple rule where officers who refused promotion, and thus indicated they were unprepared to accept the responsibility which went with it, were concerned. They were never again asked to accept it. In fact, they were never employed in responsible positions again... and only in the most extraordinary of conditions were they ever employed in any capacity. And while he was hardly alone in looking for ways to avoid the role of StateSec's scapegoat, people who refused promotion, especially in a navy fighting for its life, were likely to find their professional colleagues actively assisting the SS in getting rid of them.
He frowned at the thought and made a mental note to be certain that his reports gave full credit for Harrington's capture to Zachary and Turner. The Fleet would know he'd been in command, and his modesty would stand him in excellent stead with his peers, but with a little bit of luck, well, he admitted, probably it'll take a lot of luck, but it's worth trying for, the official record would steer any promotion towards Zachary and Turner. And, he reflected, both of them certainly deserve it. Luck may have played a big part in their pulling this off, but luck always plays a part. God knows Harrington's been shot through with luck to manage all she has!
He nodded and took his cigar from his mouth. He held it in front of himself, studying the glowing tip with a frown, and let his mind replay Zachary's message. He was certain the citizen captain would have told him if Harrington had been injured in the battle, and he was glad she hadn't been. Much as news of her capture pleased him, Tourville was not one of the Republican officers who hated her for what she'd done to their Navy. Indeed, that was one reason the thought of capturing her pleased him so. She was a foe he could respect, one worthy of his steel, and he looked forward to meeting her. And, he told himself with a mental chuckle, I especially look forward to being the first senior Republican officer to meet her when he's not her prisoner!
But the fact that he did respect her, as much as her own military record or her political importance, made it even more important that she be treated with the courtesy her rank and achievements had earned. The Republics reputation for proper treatment of prisoners of war had not been an admirable one even under the Legislaturalists. Lester Tourville was one of the officers who felt both shamed by and bitter over that, and the Republic’s record had gotten even worse under the new regime. State Security now had primary authority for the management of prisoners, both military and political, and the Navy fought a continuous, clandestine war to keep its POWs out of StateSecs clutches. Unfortunately, the Navy won only the battles the SS chose to let it win, and even those victories were usually no more than the result of StateSecs decision to let the Navy come up with the personnel required to run its own POW camps while the SS concentrated on more important (and politically sensitive) prisons.
It was possible, even probable, that StateSec would demand that Harrington be turned over to it, Tourville realized, and his smile vanished into a bleak nonexpression. Not only did she deserve better, but unlike StateSecs thugs, Tourville and every other member of the Peoples Navy had a direct interest in the proper treatment of captured Allied personnel. There were many more PN officers and ratings in Allied hands than the reverse, and if the Manties decided to retaliate for the mistreatment of their personnel, it wouldn't be State Security who paid the price.
The citizen rear admiral cocked his chair back again and gazed thoughtfully at his com. He noted Bogdanovich's expression, the puzzlement in the chief of staffs eyes as he sensed his admiral’s change of mood without grasping all the reasons for it. But Bogdanovich was secondary to Tourville’s thoughts at the moment. There were aspects to this situation which he'd overlooked in his immediate exultation, and his mind began to click as he considered how best to deal with the repercussions looming up down the road.
Could he enlist Everard Honeker's aid? He certainly couldn't explain his reasoning to the people’s commissioner on the record, but Honeker had been his political watchdog long enough for them to develop a certain mutual understanding. And Honeker would reap his own share of the credit for Harrington's capture, which might just incline him to listen to what Tourville had to say. Properly speaking, Honeker himself belonged to the Office of State Security, which could reasonably be expected to hold his institutional loyalty, but he was also at least a quasi-officer who'd been exposed to the realities of naval service. More to the point, perhaps, he wasn't an idiot like too many other commissioners. Although he certainly wasn't about to admit it, he seemed to understand that a navy which expected to win wars simply could not ignore operational realities in favor of subservience to every jot and tittle of revolutionary doctrine, however asinine. He'd certainly shown himself willing to look the other way from time to time in the interest of rationality and efficiency, but could Tourville convince him to lend his support to keeping Harrington in Navy hands rather than turning her over to the SS?
The one thing the citizen rear admiral couldn't do was appeal to Honeker solely on the basis of moral obligations and the honor of the Fleet. Not because Honeker wouldn't understand the appeal was seriously meant, but because the peoples commissioner, like any people's commissioner, came with a preprogrammed rejection of anything that smacked of the old regime's prerevolutionary concepts. It was, after all, an imperishable article of faith with them that the Legislaturalist regime had collapsed under the weight of its own corrupt decadence, and that the Committee of Public Safety was engaged in a revolutionary fight to the death against the forces of reactionism, aristocracy, elitism, and entrenched plutocratic interests. The values of those opponents of justice and progress were only lies, invented to manipulate the masses, and so had to be cast aside as the posturing of the greedy elite, which had conspired throughout history to oppress and debase the People. As Citizen Committeewoman Ransom herself was fond of putting it, "Honor is a word plutocrats use when they want someone killed."
Tourville had come to suspect Honeker subscribed more deeply to the decadent values Ransom despised than he was prepared to admit, but the people's commissioner was like a man from an intensely religious family who still attended church regularly without ever admitting to himself that he'd secretly become an agnostic. Whatever might go on in the depths of his mind, he would never openly contest orthodox doctrine, and so Tourville would have to base his argument, overtly, at least, on an analysis of solid, tangible, and immediate advantage and disadvantage. Even though that agnostic part of Honeker might actually hear the moral argument, he had to give the commissioner something else which they could both pretend was the real reason for his support.
The best bet is the Deneb Accords, Tourville told himself. God knows StateSec's violated them often enough, but they're still the official basis for the treatment of captured personnel, and they explicitly charge their signatories' militaries with seeing to it that military POWs are properly treated. And the Solarian League's accepted responsibility for monitoring the treatment of both sides' prisoners in this war. State Sec may have managed to fob off the League's investigators so far, but what if I make the point to Honeker that Harrington's going to be an especially high-profile prisoner? The Manties aren't going to accept any "sloppy record keeping" excuses if she disappears, and she's also a steadholder. Even those idiots the League sends out here will have to get off their asses and really look at the situation if we "misplace" a head of state! And I could argue that naval efficiency will suffer if our people expect the other side to violate the Accords and that mistreating— No, better stay away from the idea of mistreating. He's likely to get defensive if I suggest that I expect the SS to abuse prisoners, even if we do both know that's precisely what happens. Let's say that if our treatment of Harrington violates the letter of the law as laid down by the Accords, a politically reactionary regime like the Star Kingdom is likely to retaliate, and our people know it.
He frowned down at his cigar for several more seconds, running over possible ways to phrase his argument. He needed to polish it up a bit, pick out exactly the right words... and think of some way to catch Honeker in an area where any bugs would be less effective before he sprang those words on the people's commissioner. Fortunately, he had several hours yet before Katana could possibly deliver her prisoners to Count Tilly.
He refocused on Bogdanovich's face at last and smiled.
"That's wonderful news, Yuri," he said. "Please inform Citizen Commissioner Honeker immediately, then make arrangements to receive Commodore Harrington and the other senior prisoners with proper military courtesies. From what I've heard, she's always been careful to treat her prisoners properly, and I intend to return the compliment."
"Yes, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Oh, and that reminds me. Pass the word to Shannon, as well. I'm sure she'll want to pay her own respects to Commodore Harrington."
"I'll see to it, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Thank you. And let me know, oh, forty-five minutes before we rendezvous with Katana."
"Yes, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Thank you," Tourville repeated, and cut the circuit. His cigar had gone out, and he relit it, puffing reflectively while he rocked his chair gently back and forth.
Now exactly how, he wondered, should he go about luring Honeker into lending him his support?
"Citizen Captain Zachary extends her compliments and asks you and your officers to accompany me to the boat bay for transfer to the flagship, Commodore."
Honor turned at the sound of Citizen Commander Luchner's voice. She hadn't heard the hatch open, and a part of her wondered how much her crushing despair had to do with her inattentiveness. She knew her lack of expression was all the proof anyone could need of how utterly defeated she felt, but it was also the best she could manage, and she nodded to Katana’s executive officer.
"Thank you, Citizen Commander." She was distantly amazed by the sound of her own voice. It came out a bit hoarse, as if it were something whose exact management she had forgotten, yet aside from that it sounded so natural, so normal, that she felt certain it must really belong to someone else pretending to be her. She brushed her foolish notion aside and cleared her throat. It didn't seem to help a lot.
"Please convey my gratitude to your commanding officer. You and your personnel have taken good care of our people... especially the wounded. I appreciate it."
Luchner started to reply, then stopped. There was very little he could say, after all, and he settled for a polite nod and stepped aside to wave Honor through the hatch.
She obeyed the gesture, and every step seemed to jar through her. The spring had gone out of her stride, replaced by a brutal, flat-footed weariness which had nothing to do with her physical state. Or, rather, it was a weariness heaped atop her bodily fatigue, and she suspected it would weigh down upon her long after she'd recovered physically.
Alistair McKeon walked at her side, and she felt his agony, his shame, burning even more cruelly than her own. She longed to comfort him, yet there was no realistic comfort to be offered, and even if there had been, McKeon was in no state to accept it. He was like a parent, mourning the death of a child and blaming himself for it, and the fact that none of it was his fault meant nothing to him at this moment.
Nor was Alistair the only person whose emotions lashed at her, for Andrew LaFollet followed close behind her. His utterly emotionless expression might conceal it from everyone else, but Honor felt every nuance of his frantic sense of helplessness... and failure. Echoes of those same emotions snarled in the back of her brain from James Candless and Robert Whitman, as well, for they were Grayson armsmen who could no longer protect the woman they were sworn to guard, and their desperate concern for her threatened to be more than she could bear.
She wanted to scream at them, to command them to stop. To beg them to protect her from their emotions, at least, since they could no longer protect her from anything else. But even if there'd been any hope that they could obey such an order, she had no right to give it, for the feelings whose echoes gouged away bits and pieces of her soul sprang from who and what her armsmen were. It was their devotion to her which made them so frantic, and how could she add to their distress by telling them how their misery tormented her?
She couldn't, of course. In fact, she'd done all she could by identifying them to their captors as Grayson Marines. She'd recognized McKeon's astonishment when she informed Luchner that LaFollet was a Marine colonel and that Candless and Whitman were both Marine lieutenants, but he'd said nothing. She knew he'd assumed she was lying in order to keep Candless and Whitman from being separated from her when the prisoners were segregated into commissioned and enlisted ranks, but he was only half right. That was the reason she'd identified them as Marines, but she hadn't lied.
The Grayson word "armsman" was a term with a multiplicity of uses. It was used for most police personnel, but it had a very special meaning where a steadholder's retainers were concerned. The "Harrington Steadholder's Guard" was actually two separate bodies, one within the other. The smaller of the two, properly known as the Steadholder's Own Guard, consisted of only fifty men, because the Grayson Constitution limited any steadholder to a maximum of fifty personal armsmen. The Harrington Steadholder's Guard as a whole contained the Steadholder's Own, who held commissions in both, plus every other uniformed member of Harrington Steading's police force. All of its members, to the confusion of foreigners, were called "armsmen," but there were significant differences between their duties. The Steadholder's Own provided Honor's personal security detachment, a function in which the rest of the Guard assisted as required, and replacements for the Steadholder's Own were normally drawn from the rest of the Guard, as well. But she could never have more than fifty personal armsmen, for Benjamin the Great hadn't spent fourteen years fighting one of the most bitter civil wars in human history just so his son or grandson could do it all over again. The steadholders' armies of personal retainers had provided the core of trained troops for both sides in the civil war, and so Benjamin’s Constitution had set an absolute ceiling on the personal legions his steadholders could thenceforth raise. And he'd taken one more precautionary step by granting every armsman an officers commission in the Grayson Army, as well.
His intent had been simple. If all armsmen belonged to the Army, then, in theory at least, a Protector could summon the armsmen of a recalcitrant steadholder to active Army service, thus depriving him even of the fifty personal retainers he was allowed. The fact that a steadholder who was allowed only fifty armsmen would tend to recruit the very best he could find also meant that the supply of backup officers they represented would be of high caliber if they were ever actually needed, which was an additional benefit, but everyone knew it had also been a secondary one from Benjamin’s viewpoint.
Unfortunately for his plan, however, the Planetary High Court of a later (and weaker) Protector had observed that armsmen received their Army commissions because they were armsmen... and that they became armsmen in the first place on the basis of the oaths of loyalty they'd sworn to their steadholders. In the courts view, that meant their first responsibility was to the steadholders they served, not the Army. As such, they could be called to active Army service only with the consent of their liege lords, which no steadholder engaged in a face-off against the Protector was likely to grant.
That had blown Benjamin’s intentions out from under his descendants, but the constitutional provisions remained. And since Grayson Marines were simply Army troops assigned to shipboard duty, and since LaFollet, Candless, and Whitman did hold Army commissions, they were indeed technically Marine officers. It was a fragile assertion, resting entirely on the peculiarities of Grayson's domestic laws, but it was an honest one, and the fact that the personnel records for Honors armsmen had all been left in her personal files aboard Alvarez meant there was no documentary evidence to challenge it.
Yet any satisfaction Honor had felt when Luchner accepted them as Marines had been no more than a brief flicker in the blackness which had engulfed her, dwarfed by the defeat and failure which filled the men and women about her. In many cases it was accompanied by an enormous sense of gratitude at having survived, as well, but for most even that relief was flawed. In a way, having been spared death or injury became another source of shame, for the survivors felt guilty for being grateful, as if that very human reaction were somehow despicable, and that, too, beat in upon Honor through Nimitz.
She closed her eyes, tasting the bitter flavor of her officers' inner darkness, and hugged the 'cat to her chest. Like most of the captured officers following her towards Katana's boat bay, he still wore his skinsuit. It made him much too heavy to ride in his usual place on her shoulder, but she had deliberately chosen to leave him in it, and her arms tightened about him as she faced the reason she had.
A dark and terrible, and intensely personal, fear snarled deep inside her. She'd done her best to drive it out of her forebrain, to ignore it or at least to so occupy herself with her duties that she could pretend she'd ignored it, but all her efforts had been a lie. The fear only laughed at efforts to suppress it. It jeered and whispered to her, mocking her, and her inability to set it aside as her intellect insisted she ought only made her ashamed of the weakness she could not master.
But worst of all, the same intellect which told her it was her duty to defeat her fear knew that fear was valid, for it was the fear of separation. The fear that her captors would dismiss Nimitz as no more than a curious, alien pet, an animal, and separate her from him. Or, still worse, that they would class him as a dangerous alien animal. The consequences of any such decision terrified her so deeply that she dared not let herself face them fully, yet neither dared she ignore them. And so she'd left him in his suit, hoping his obvious training in its use would emphasize his intelligence and make it clear he was far more than a "mere animal" when the time came for her to defend him as such. And, she admitted, the suit's gloves hid the murderous, centimeter-long scimitars of his claws. None of her captors had ever seen Nimitz in action, and if she could just conceal the lethality of his natural weapons until she'd had a chance to fix his intelligence and self-control firmly in their minds, perhaps she could protect him.
Perhaps... and perhaps not. But if she couldn't, if someone tried to separate them or to injure Nimitz, if, She clenched her jaw and jerked free of the choking panic as it tried to build within her once more. She had other responsibilities, duties she must somehow discharge, and she felt Nimitz reach up to stroke her face with a gentle true-hand. He felt her dread, and she knew he understood its source, for she felt his answering fear. In fact, the two of them were trapped in a feedback loop in which their shared fear fed upon itself and grew strong. But she also felt his support, his love and fierce rejection of her conscience's efforts to punish her for the way her thoughts seemed to waver and flow like water when she should be concentrating on her duty to the people her orders had brought to this.
But he was wrong. She did have those other responsibilities, and somehow she forced her shoulders to straighten and her head to rise as the procession of prisoners reached the boat bay gallery. Expressionless Peep Marines lined the bulkheads, pulse rifles at port arms, not overtly threatening but instantly ready, and Honor's lips quirked bitterly. She'd seen her own Marines in similar poses, alert eyes watchful as surrendered Peep personnel passed into captivity. Now it was her turn, and that wasn't supposed to happen. The Royal Navy was supposed to take its enemies prisoner, not be captured by them, and not even the fact that Prince Adrian's sacrifice had saved the rest of the convoy could assuage Honors shame at having failed her Queen.
Citizen Commander Luchner extended his hand to her, and she gripped it firmly. Somehow she managed to dredge up a caricature of a smile for him, and the shamed part of her sneered at the paucity of her efforts. Whatever else had happened, Luchner and his CO had, indeed, treated their prisoners well. He deserved more than a corpse grin from her for his efforts, yet it was the best she could offer, and she hoped he understood.
He stood aside once more, and the Marines split Honor and her officers up into pinnace-sized groups. They swam down the boarding tubes to the small craft, once more watched by the silent Marines, and took their seats. Then the pinnaces undocked, turning on reaction thrusters to exit the bay in a long line, and Honor leaned back in the inappropriately comfortable chair and closed her eyes, alone once more with her despair.
Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville turned from his conversation with Citizen Captain Hewitt, his flag captain, as the boat bay tractors deposited the lead pinnace in the docking buffers. Mechanical docking arms locked, the boarding tube and umbilical connections ran out to the small craft, and Tourville inhaled deeply.
He'd done his best with Honeker, and to be honest, he'd wrought a bit better than he'd hoped. They'd discussed the situation quietly in a corner of Count Tilly's gym under cover of the background noise from a basketball game. Neither of them had commented on why Tourville had chosen that particular difficult-to-bug spot, but that in itself had told him Honeker understood his reasons for inviting the people's commissioner there.
And, as he'd hoped, Honeker had been sympathetic. In fact, Tourville suspected Honeker had been almost as responsive to the citizen admiral's concern over the honor and moral responsibilities of the Fleet as to the more "practical" implications of the way they treated their prisoners. Yet there were limits on how far the commissioner was prepared to go. In effect, he'd agreed, without ever specifically saying it in so many words, to defer to Tourville's treatment of Harrington and her personnel. The matter, he'd said, was "appropriately a responsibility of the military." That was a phrase more than one people's commissioner had used to dump a difficult decision on the Navy without giving up the right to hold the Navy accountable for any adverse consequences, but this time Tourville was glad to hear it, for it freed him to act as he saw fit.
But at a price. In allowing "the military" to take responsibility, Honeker had been forced to disassociate himself from Tourville's decisions, and so he was conspicuously absent as the surrendered Manticoran personnel arrived aboard Count Tilly. For him to avoid interfering with Tourville's actions, he also had to distance himself from them. In turn, that would limit his ability to support Tourville against higher authority, assuming he had any inclination to do so, down the road.
The boarding tube's inboard hatch opened, and Tourville clasped his hands behind him and waited. No more than fifteen or twenty seconds passed before the first person, a tall, athletic woman, swam down the tube. Unlike almost all of the other prisoners, she was in uniform, not a skinsuit, and she moved gracefully, despite the sixty-centimeter-long creature she clasped to her chest with one arm. Her free hand reached up for the grab bar at the inboard end of the tube, and she swung herself across the interface into Count Tilly's shipboard gravity and stepped forward, clearing the way for those behind her.
She stood tall and erect, her shoulders squared and her chin high, and her strongly carved, triangular face was almost inhumanly calm, yet Tourville hid a wince at the bleak pain in her almondine eyes. Those eyes moved over the officers, and Marine guards, assembled in the boat bay gallery. They swept across Tourville himself and locked on Citizen Captain Hewitt, and she came to attention as she turned to face him.
"Commodore Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy," she said. Her soprano was sweet and soft... and as leached of all emotion as her face.
"Citizen Captain Alfred Hewitt, PNS Count Tilly" Hewitt replied. He didn't add any stupid formulae about welcoming her aboard. He simply held out his hand.
Honor stared down at it for a moment, then took it. He squeezed more firmly than she'd expected, and she saw an odd mixture of triumph and sympathy in his face. She knew that expression; it was just that she'd never seen it on someone else's face.
"Commodore Harrington," Hewitt went on formally, "allow me to present Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville."
"Citizen Rear Admiral." Honor turned to Tourville just as Alistair McKeon swung out of the tube. She heard McKeon and Hewitt beginning the same formal exchange, but her attention was on Tourville, and she felt a first, small stir of hope as tendrils of his emotions reached out to her. The Peep admiral's feelings were too complex for easy analysis. A sense of triumph and professional pride predominated, yet she tasted both sympathy and a determination to act honorably under them as he offered his hand in turn.
"Commodore Harrington." Tourville looked into his prisoners eyes, trying to get a feel for the woman behind them, and she met his searching gaze without flinching. "I was sorry to hear your casualties were so high," he said. "I promise our medical personnel will treat your wounded as if they were our own... and that you and all your people will be treated with the courtesy of your rank."
"Thank you, Sir." Honor saw his eyes flicker and wanted to kick herself for forgetting that only people's commissioners were addressed as "Sir" or "Ma'am" aboard Peep ships. But then she realized there was no commissioner present, and a faint sense of curiosity nibbled at her shell of despair.
"You're welcome," Tourville replied after a moment, and then gave her a small, fleeting smile. "It's only fair, after all, given your own record with those of our people who've, ah, found themselves your guests, shall we say?" She blinked in surprise, and he gave another, more natural smile. "In fact, I believe that my operations officer, Citizen Commander Foraker, spent some time aboard your last flagship," he added.
"Shannon Foraker?" Honor said, and he nodded.
"Indeed. I've spoken with her at some length, Commodore. And while nothing can ever be guaranteed in wartime, I hope you and your personnel will find your treatment in our hands as humane and proper as Citizen Commander Foraker found her treatment in yours." Tourville’s voice, and emotions, were sincere, yet there was an edge of warning in his tone, and Honor understood the unspoken message behind it. But then he looked directly into her eyes. "In particular, Commodore, I'm glad the Citizen Commander was able to give me some additional background on your, um, companion." He gestured at Nimitz, never unlocking his gaze from Honor's. "I understand you have a unique sort of bond with him, and Citizen Commander Foraker assures me he's far more intelligent than one might normally assume from his small size. Under the circumstances, I've given instructions that he's to remain with you, so long as he behaves himself, for the duration of your stay aboard Count Tilly. Of course, I will also have to hold you responsible for ensuring that he does behave, and I trust you, and he, will see to it that I have no cause to regret my decision."
"Thank you, Citizen Rear Admiral," Honor said quietly. "Thank you very much. And you have my word Nimitz and I will give you no cause to regret your generosity."
Tourville made a small, dismissive gesture, waving aside her thanks, and turned to Alistair McKeon, but Honor felt Nimitz relax in her arms as he sensed the sincerity of the citizen rear admiral's offer. The easing of the 'cat's tension damped the feedback effect, and she felt her muscles unknotting, yet her own reaction was more guarded than his. Treecats concentrated on the here-and-now, operating on a "sufficient unto the day" basis that put aside threats and problems which were not immediate. And because 'cats operated that way, Nimitz, despite his empathic sense, had missed the subtle subtext of Tourville’s last sentence. His assurance that Nimitz and Honor would remain together "for the duration of your stay" aboard his flagship was both a promise... and a warning that he could guarantee nothing once they left the battlecruiser.
The future yawned before her, dark and threatening, and already something inside her had begun to recognize the crushing effect helplessness could exert on a personality accustomed to controlling its own destiny and taking responsibility for its own actions. But there was nothing she could do about that, and so she drew a deep mental breath, stepped back from the things she couldn't change, and tried to take a page from Nimitz’s book.
One day at a time, she thought. That's how I have to take it: one day at a time.
Yet even as she told herself that, and knew it was true, she felt the dangerous void of her powerless future waiting to suck her under, and she was afraid.
Chapter Nineteen
"Among the prisoners we've so far identified are Prince Adrian's commander, Captain Alistair McKeon, RMN, and the commander of the escort squadron attached to the convoy which evaded our attack, Commodore Honor Harrington. We also have several of Commodore Harrington's staff officers in custody." She paused again, almost as if she found what she'd just said impossible to believe, and then her shoulders twitched in the tiniest of shrugs.
"Unless instructed otherwise, I intend to leave Citizen Captain Turner and his ship to complete the task of securing Prince Adrian and take my own command to rendezvous with the flagship in order to transfer my commissioned prisoners aboard as quickly as possible. I will continue my survey of my own damages en route to you, and hope to be able to give you a complete report on them upon my arrival. Citizen Commissioner Kuttner has been informed of my intentions and endorsed them. Zachary, clear."
The screen blanked briefly once more, and Bogdanovich's image reappeared. The chief of staffs eyes sparkled, and Tourville felt a huge grin spread across his face. He knew his excitement and delight were out of keeping with the addition of a mere heavy cruiser to the eleven prizes his ships had already taken in Adler, even if the cruiser in question did belong to the navy which had kicked the PN's butt regularly for six years now, but he didn't really care.
"Harrington," he murmured. "Harrington, by God!"
"Yes, Sir! I mean, yes, Citizen Rear Admiral!"
Bogdanovich returned his grin with interest, and Tourville tipped his chair back and crossed his legs. His smile turned almost dreamy, and he drew a cigar from his breast pocket. Affectation or not, there would never be a more appropriate moment for one.
Harrington, he thought. First Adler, and now Harrington!
He unwrapped the cigar, nipped its end off with strong, white teeth, then lit it with finicky precision while his mind considered what Public Information would do with this bit of news. A mere commodore shouldn't have been all that big a catch, especially not against the galaxy of Republican vice admirals and admirals the Manties had bagged. But there was nothing "mere" about this particular commodore. Honor Harrington was one of the bogeymen of the People’s Navy. She'd come to epitomize the vast gulf between the capabilities of the RMN and the People's Navy, and Tourville savored the sense of having taken a large first step to bridge that gulf. For all its small scale, his success at Adler was the most one-sided defeat the Manties had suffered in five hundred T-years, and their people would realize that just as clearly as Tourville did. That was probably already more than Citizen Admiral Theisman had dared hope for when he sent Tourville out, but now, as an unexpected bonus, ships under his command had also captured Harrington.
He allowed himself to consider the consequences of his triumph for several more seconds, but then he blew a cloud of smoke and made himself come back to ground. There was a certain danger bound up in his success, he reflected. For one thing, it was damned likely to get him promoted, and that was bad. He'd prospered so far by avoiding the higher rank which would take him away from the independent commands he loved, on the one hand, and expose him to the risk of being made an example for failure that went with fleet command, on the other. But if Public Information poured it on too thick and heavy, the Navy would have little choice but to offer him promotion, and he could hardly escape it once it had been offered.
Any navy, even one whose high command languished in the grip of revolutionary fervor, had a simple rule where officers who refused promotion, and thus indicated they were unprepared to accept the responsibility which went with it, were concerned. They were never again asked to accept it. In fact, they were never employed in responsible positions again... and only in the most extraordinary of conditions were they ever employed in any capacity. And while he was hardly alone in looking for ways to avoid the role of StateSec's scapegoat, people who refused promotion, especially in a navy fighting for its life, were likely to find their professional colleagues actively assisting the SS in getting rid of them.
He frowned at the thought and made a mental note to be certain that his reports gave full credit for Harrington's capture to Zachary and Turner. The Fleet would know he'd been in command, and his modesty would stand him in excellent stead with his peers, but with a little bit of luck, well, he admitted, probably it'll take a lot of luck, but it's worth trying for, the official record would steer any promotion towards Zachary and Turner. And, he reflected, both of them certainly deserve it. Luck may have played a big part in their pulling this off, but luck always plays a part. God knows Harrington's been shot through with luck to manage all she has!
He nodded and took his cigar from his mouth. He held it in front of himself, studying the glowing tip with a frown, and let his mind replay Zachary's message. He was certain the citizen captain would have told him if Harrington had been injured in the battle, and he was glad she hadn't been. Much as news of her capture pleased him, Tourville was not one of the Republican officers who hated her for what she'd done to their Navy. Indeed, that was one reason the thought of capturing her pleased him so. She was a foe he could respect, one worthy of his steel, and he looked forward to meeting her. And, he told himself with a mental chuckle, I especially look forward to being the first senior Republican officer to meet her when he's not her prisoner!
But the fact that he did respect her, as much as her own military record or her political importance, made it even more important that she be treated with the courtesy her rank and achievements had earned. The Republics reputation for proper treatment of prisoners of war had not been an admirable one even under the Legislaturalists. Lester Tourville was one of the officers who felt both shamed by and bitter over that, and the Republic’s record had gotten even worse under the new regime. State Security now had primary authority for the management of prisoners, both military and political, and the Navy fought a continuous, clandestine war to keep its POWs out of StateSecs clutches. Unfortunately, the Navy won only the battles the SS chose to let it win, and even those victories were usually no more than the result of StateSecs decision to let the Navy come up with the personnel required to run its own POW camps while the SS concentrated on more important (and politically sensitive) prisons.
It was possible, even probable, that StateSec would demand that Harrington be turned over to it, Tourville realized, and his smile vanished into a bleak nonexpression. Not only did she deserve better, but unlike StateSecs thugs, Tourville and every other member of the Peoples Navy had a direct interest in the proper treatment of captured Allied personnel. There were many more PN officers and ratings in Allied hands than the reverse, and if the Manties decided to retaliate for the mistreatment of their personnel, it wouldn't be State Security who paid the price.
The citizen rear admiral cocked his chair back again and gazed thoughtfully at his com. He noted Bogdanovich's expression, the puzzlement in the chief of staffs eyes as he sensed his admiral’s change of mood without grasping all the reasons for it. But Bogdanovich was secondary to Tourville’s thoughts at the moment. There were aspects to this situation which he'd overlooked in his immediate exultation, and his mind began to click as he considered how best to deal with the repercussions looming up down the road.
Could he enlist Everard Honeker's aid? He certainly couldn't explain his reasoning to the people’s commissioner on the record, but Honeker had been his political watchdog long enough for them to develop a certain mutual understanding. And Honeker would reap his own share of the credit for Harrington's capture, which might just incline him to listen to what Tourville had to say. Properly speaking, Honeker himself belonged to the Office of State Security, which could reasonably be expected to hold his institutional loyalty, but he was also at least a quasi-officer who'd been exposed to the realities of naval service. More to the point, perhaps, he wasn't an idiot like too many other commissioners. Although he certainly wasn't about to admit it, he seemed to understand that a navy which expected to win wars simply could not ignore operational realities in favor of subservience to every jot and tittle of revolutionary doctrine, however asinine. He'd certainly shown himself willing to look the other way from time to time in the interest of rationality and efficiency, but could Tourville convince him to lend his support to keeping Harrington in Navy hands rather than turning her over to the SS?
The one thing the citizen rear admiral couldn't do was appeal to Honeker solely on the basis of moral obligations and the honor of the Fleet. Not because Honeker wouldn't understand the appeal was seriously meant, but because the peoples commissioner, like any people's commissioner, came with a preprogrammed rejection of anything that smacked of the old regime's prerevolutionary concepts. It was, after all, an imperishable article of faith with them that the Legislaturalist regime had collapsed under the weight of its own corrupt decadence, and that the Committee of Public Safety was engaged in a revolutionary fight to the death against the forces of reactionism, aristocracy, elitism, and entrenched plutocratic interests. The values of those opponents of justice and progress were only lies, invented to manipulate the masses, and so had to be cast aside as the posturing of the greedy elite, which had conspired throughout history to oppress and debase the People. As Citizen Committeewoman Ransom herself was fond of putting it, "Honor is a word plutocrats use when they want someone killed."
Tourville had come to suspect Honeker subscribed more deeply to the decadent values Ransom despised than he was prepared to admit, but the people's commissioner was like a man from an intensely religious family who still attended church regularly without ever admitting to himself that he'd secretly become an agnostic. Whatever might go on in the depths of his mind, he would never openly contest orthodox doctrine, and so Tourville would have to base his argument, overtly, at least, on an analysis of solid, tangible, and immediate advantage and disadvantage. Even though that agnostic part of Honeker might actually hear the moral argument, he had to give the commissioner something else which they could both pretend was the real reason for his support.
The best bet is the Deneb Accords, Tourville told himself. God knows StateSec's violated them often enough, but they're still the official basis for the treatment of captured personnel, and they explicitly charge their signatories' militaries with seeing to it that military POWs are properly treated. And the Solarian League's accepted responsibility for monitoring the treatment of both sides' prisoners in this war. State Sec may have managed to fob off the League's investigators so far, but what if I make the point to Honeker that Harrington's going to be an especially high-profile prisoner? The Manties aren't going to accept any "sloppy record keeping" excuses if she disappears, and she's also a steadholder. Even those idiots the League sends out here will have to get off their asses and really look at the situation if we "misplace" a head of state! And I could argue that naval efficiency will suffer if our people expect the other side to violate the Accords and that mistreating— No, better stay away from the idea of mistreating. He's likely to get defensive if I suggest that I expect the SS to abuse prisoners, even if we do both know that's precisely what happens. Let's say that if our treatment of Harrington violates the letter of the law as laid down by the Accords, a politically reactionary regime like the Star Kingdom is likely to retaliate, and our people know it.
He frowned down at his cigar for several more seconds, running over possible ways to phrase his argument. He needed to polish it up a bit, pick out exactly the right words... and think of some way to catch Honeker in an area where any bugs would be less effective before he sprang those words on the people's commissioner. Fortunately, he had several hours yet before Katana could possibly deliver her prisoners to Count Tilly.
He refocused on Bogdanovich's face at last and smiled.
"That's wonderful news, Yuri," he said. "Please inform Citizen Commissioner Honeker immediately, then make arrangements to receive Commodore Harrington and the other senior prisoners with proper military courtesies. From what I've heard, she's always been careful to treat her prisoners properly, and I intend to return the compliment."
"Yes, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Oh, and that reminds me. Pass the word to Shannon, as well. I'm sure she'll want to pay her own respects to Commodore Harrington."
"I'll see to it, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Thank you. And let me know, oh, forty-five minutes before we rendezvous with Katana."
"Yes, Citizen Rear Admiral."
"Thank you," Tourville repeated, and cut the circuit. His cigar had gone out, and he relit it, puffing reflectively while he rocked his chair gently back and forth.
Now exactly how, he wondered, should he go about luring Honeker into lending him his support?
"Citizen Captain Zachary extends her compliments and asks you and your officers to accompany me to the boat bay for transfer to the flagship, Commodore."
Honor turned at the sound of Citizen Commander Luchner's voice. She hadn't heard the hatch open, and a part of her wondered how much her crushing despair had to do with her inattentiveness. She knew her lack of expression was all the proof anyone could need of how utterly defeated she felt, but it was also the best she could manage, and she nodded to Katana’s executive officer.
"Thank you, Citizen Commander." She was distantly amazed by the sound of her own voice. It came out a bit hoarse, as if it were something whose exact management she had forgotten, yet aside from that it sounded so natural, so normal, that she felt certain it must really belong to someone else pretending to be her. She brushed her foolish notion aside and cleared her throat. It didn't seem to help a lot.
"Please convey my gratitude to your commanding officer. You and your personnel have taken good care of our people... especially the wounded. I appreciate it."
Luchner started to reply, then stopped. There was very little he could say, after all, and he settled for a polite nod and stepped aside to wave Honor through the hatch.
She obeyed the gesture, and every step seemed to jar through her. The spring had gone out of her stride, replaced by a brutal, flat-footed weariness which had nothing to do with her physical state. Or, rather, it was a weariness heaped atop her bodily fatigue, and she suspected it would weigh down upon her long after she'd recovered physically.
Alistair McKeon walked at her side, and she felt his agony, his shame, burning even more cruelly than her own. She longed to comfort him, yet there was no realistic comfort to be offered, and even if there had been, McKeon was in no state to accept it. He was like a parent, mourning the death of a child and blaming himself for it, and the fact that none of it was his fault meant nothing to him at this moment.
Nor was Alistair the only person whose emotions lashed at her, for Andrew LaFollet followed close behind her. His utterly emotionless expression might conceal it from everyone else, but Honor felt every nuance of his frantic sense of helplessness... and failure. Echoes of those same emotions snarled in the back of her brain from James Candless and Robert Whitman, as well, for they were Grayson armsmen who could no longer protect the woman they were sworn to guard, and their desperate concern for her threatened to be more than she could bear.
She wanted to scream at them, to command them to stop. To beg them to protect her from their emotions, at least, since they could no longer protect her from anything else. But even if there'd been any hope that they could obey such an order, she had no right to give it, for the feelings whose echoes gouged away bits and pieces of her soul sprang from who and what her armsmen were. It was their devotion to her which made them so frantic, and how could she add to their distress by telling them how their misery tormented her?
She couldn't, of course. In fact, she'd done all she could by identifying them to their captors as Grayson Marines. She'd recognized McKeon's astonishment when she informed Luchner that LaFollet was a Marine colonel and that Candless and Whitman were both Marine lieutenants, but he'd said nothing. She knew he'd assumed she was lying in order to keep Candless and Whitman from being separated from her when the prisoners were segregated into commissioned and enlisted ranks, but he was only half right. That was the reason she'd identified them as Marines, but she hadn't lied.
The Grayson word "armsman" was a term with a multiplicity of uses. It was used for most police personnel, but it had a very special meaning where a steadholder's retainers were concerned. The "Harrington Steadholder's Guard" was actually two separate bodies, one within the other. The smaller of the two, properly known as the Steadholder's Own Guard, consisted of only fifty men, because the Grayson Constitution limited any steadholder to a maximum of fifty personal armsmen. The Harrington Steadholder's Guard as a whole contained the Steadholder's Own, who held commissions in both, plus every other uniformed member of Harrington Steading's police force. All of its members, to the confusion of foreigners, were called "armsmen," but there were significant differences between their duties. The Steadholder's Own provided Honor's personal security detachment, a function in which the rest of the Guard assisted as required, and replacements for the Steadholder's Own were normally drawn from the rest of the Guard, as well. But she could never have more than fifty personal armsmen, for Benjamin the Great hadn't spent fourteen years fighting one of the most bitter civil wars in human history just so his son or grandson could do it all over again. The steadholders' armies of personal retainers had provided the core of trained troops for both sides in the civil war, and so Benjamin’s Constitution had set an absolute ceiling on the personal legions his steadholders could thenceforth raise. And he'd taken one more precautionary step by granting every armsman an officers commission in the Grayson Army, as well.
His intent had been simple. If all armsmen belonged to the Army, then, in theory at least, a Protector could summon the armsmen of a recalcitrant steadholder to active Army service, thus depriving him even of the fifty personal retainers he was allowed. The fact that a steadholder who was allowed only fifty armsmen would tend to recruit the very best he could find also meant that the supply of backup officers they represented would be of high caliber if they were ever actually needed, which was an additional benefit, but everyone knew it had also been a secondary one from Benjamin’s viewpoint.
Unfortunately for his plan, however, the Planetary High Court of a later (and weaker) Protector had observed that armsmen received their Army commissions because they were armsmen... and that they became armsmen in the first place on the basis of the oaths of loyalty they'd sworn to their steadholders. In the courts view, that meant their first responsibility was to the steadholders they served, not the Army. As such, they could be called to active Army service only with the consent of their liege lords, which no steadholder engaged in a face-off against the Protector was likely to grant.
That had blown Benjamin’s intentions out from under his descendants, but the constitutional provisions remained. And since Grayson Marines were simply Army troops assigned to shipboard duty, and since LaFollet, Candless, and Whitman did hold Army commissions, they were indeed technically Marine officers. It was a fragile assertion, resting entirely on the peculiarities of Grayson's domestic laws, but it was an honest one, and the fact that the personnel records for Honors armsmen had all been left in her personal files aboard Alvarez meant there was no documentary evidence to challenge it.
Yet any satisfaction Honor had felt when Luchner accepted them as Marines had been no more than a brief flicker in the blackness which had engulfed her, dwarfed by the defeat and failure which filled the men and women about her. In many cases it was accompanied by an enormous sense of gratitude at having survived, as well, but for most even that relief was flawed. In a way, having been spared death or injury became another source of shame, for the survivors felt guilty for being grateful, as if that very human reaction were somehow despicable, and that, too, beat in upon Honor through Nimitz.
She closed her eyes, tasting the bitter flavor of her officers' inner darkness, and hugged the 'cat to her chest. Like most of the captured officers following her towards Katana's boat bay, he still wore his skinsuit. It made him much too heavy to ride in his usual place on her shoulder, but she had deliberately chosen to leave him in it, and her arms tightened about him as she faced the reason she had.
A dark and terrible, and intensely personal, fear snarled deep inside her. She'd done her best to drive it out of her forebrain, to ignore it or at least to so occupy herself with her duties that she could pretend she'd ignored it, but all her efforts had been a lie. The fear only laughed at efforts to suppress it. It jeered and whispered to her, mocking her, and her inability to set it aside as her intellect insisted she ought only made her ashamed of the weakness she could not master.
But worst of all, the same intellect which told her it was her duty to defeat her fear knew that fear was valid, for it was the fear of separation. The fear that her captors would dismiss Nimitz as no more than a curious, alien pet, an animal, and separate her from him. Or, still worse, that they would class him as a dangerous alien animal. The consequences of any such decision terrified her so deeply that she dared not let herself face them fully, yet neither dared she ignore them. And so she'd left him in his suit, hoping his obvious training in its use would emphasize his intelligence and make it clear he was far more than a "mere animal" when the time came for her to defend him as such. And, she admitted, the suit's gloves hid the murderous, centimeter-long scimitars of his claws. None of her captors had ever seen Nimitz in action, and if she could just conceal the lethality of his natural weapons until she'd had a chance to fix his intelligence and self-control firmly in their minds, perhaps she could protect him.
Perhaps... and perhaps not. But if she couldn't, if someone tried to separate them or to injure Nimitz, if, She clenched her jaw and jerked free of the choking panic as it tried to build within her once more. She had other responsibilities, duties she must somehow discharge, and she felt Nimitz reach up to stroke her face with a gentle true-hand. He felt her dread, and she knew he understood its source, for she felt his answering fear. In fact, the two of them were trapped in a feedback loop in which their shared fear fed upon itself and grew strong. But she also felt his support, his love and fierce rejection of her conscience's efforts to punish her for the way her thoughts seemed to waver and flow like water when she should be concentrating on her duty to the people her orders had brought to this.
But he was wrong. She did have those other responsibilities, and somehow she forced her shoulders to straighten and her head to rise as the procession of prisoners reached the boat bay gallery. Expressionless Peep Marines lined the bulkheads, pulse rifles at port arms, not overtly threatening but instantly ready, and Honor's lips quirked bitterly. She'd seen her own Marines in similar poses, alert eyes watchful as surrendered Peep personnel passed into captivity. Now it was her turn, and that wasn't supposed to happen. The Royal Navy was supposed to take its enemies prisoner, not be captured by them, and not even the fact that Prince Adrian's sacrifice had saved the rest of the convoy could assuage Honors shame at having failed her Queen.
Citizen Commander Luchner extended his hand to her, and she gripped it firmly. Somehow she managed to dredge up a caricature of a smile for him, and the shamed part of her sneered at the paucity of her efforts. Whatever else had happened, Luchner and his CO had, indeed, treated their prisoners well. He deserved more than a corpse grin from her for his efforts, yet it was the best she could offer, and she hoped he understood.
He stood aside once more, and the Marines split Honor and her officers up into pinnace-sized groups. They swam down the boarding tubes to the small craft, once more watched by the silent Marines, and took their seats. Then the pinnaces undocked, turning on reaction thrusters to exit the bay in a long line, and Honor leaned back in the inappropriately comfortable chair and closed her eyes, alone once more with her despair.
Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville turned from his conversation with Citizen Captain Hewitt, his flag captain, as the boat bay tractors deposited the lead pinnace in the docking buffers. Mechanical docking arms locked, the boarding tube and umbilical connections ran out to the small craft, and Tourville inhaled deeply.
He'd done his best with Honeker, and to be honest, he'd wrought a bit better than he'd hoped. They'd discussed the situation quietly in a corner of Count Tilly's gym under cover of the background noise from a basketball game. Neither of them had commented on why Tourville had chosen that particular difficult-to-bug spot, but that in itself had told him Honeker understood his reasons for inviting the people's commissioner there.
And, as he'd hoped, Honeker had been sympathetic. In fact, Tourville suspected Honeker had been almost as responsive to the citizen admiral's concern over the honor and moral responsibilities of the Fleet as to the more "practical" implications of the way they treated their prisoners. Yet there were limits on how far the commissioner was prepared to go. In effect, he'd agreed, without ever specifically saying it in so many words, to defer to Tourville's treatment of Harrington and her personnel. The matter, he'd said, was "appropriately a responsibility of the military." That was a phrase more than one people's commissioner had used to dump a difficult decision on the Navy without giving up the right to hold the Navy accountable for any adverse consequences, but this time Tourville was glad to hear it, for it freed him to act as he saw fit.
But at a price. In allowing "the military" to take responsibility, Honeker had been forced to disassociate himself from Tourville's decisions, and so he was conspicuously absent as the surrendered Manticoran personnel arrived aboard Count Tilly. For him to avoid interfering with Tourville's actions, he also had to distance himself from them. In turn, that would limit his ability to support Tourville against higher authority, assuming he had any inclination to do so, down the road.
The boarding tube's inboard hatch opened, and Tourville clasped his hands behind him and waited. No more than fifteen or twenty seconds passed before the first person, a tall, athletic woman, swam down the tube. Unlike almost all of the other prisoners, she was in uniform, not a skinsuit, and she moved gracefully, despite the sixty-centimeter-long creature she clasped to her chest with one arm. Her free hand reached up for the grab bar at the inboard end of the tube, and she swung herself across the interface into Count Tilly's shipboard gravity and stepped forward, clearing the way for those behind her.
She stood tall and erect, her shoulders squared and her chin high, and her strongly carved, triangular face was almost inhumanly calm, yet Tourville hid a wince at the bleak pain in her almondine eyes. Those eyes moved over the officers, and Marine guards, assembled in the boat bay gallery. They swept across Tourville himself and locked on Citizen Captain Hewitt, and she came to attention as she turned to face him.
"Commodore Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy," she said. Her soprano was sweet and soft... and as leached of all emotion as her face.
"Citizen Captain Alfred Hewitt, PNS Count Tilly" Hewitt replied. He didn't add any stupid formulae about welcoming her aboard. He simply held out his hand.
Honor stared down at it for a moment, then took it. He squeezed more firmly than she'd expected, and she saw an odd mixture of triumph and sympathy in his face. She knew that expression; it was just that she'd never seen it on someone else's face.
"Commodore Harrington," Hewitt went on formally, "allow me to present Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville."
"Citizen Rear Admiral." Honor turned to Tourville just as Alistair McKeon swung out of the tube. She heard McKeon and Hewitt beginning the same formal exchange, but her attention was on Tourville, and she felt a first, small stir of hope as tendrils of his emotions reached out to her. The Peep admiral's feelings were too complex for easy analysis. A sense of triumph and professional pride predominated, yet she tasted both sympathy and a determination to act honorably under them as he offered his hand in turn.
"Commodore Harrington." Tourville looked into his prisoners eyes, trying to get a feel for the woman behind them, and she met his searching gaze without flinching. "I was sorry to hear your casualties were so high," he said. "I promise our medical personnel will treat your wounded as if they were our own... and that you and all your people will be treated with the courtesy of your rank."
"Thank you, Sir." Honor saw his eyes flicker and wanted to kick herself for forgetting that only people's commissioners were addressed as "Sir" or "Ma'am" aboard Peep ships. But then she realized there was no commissioner present, and a faint sense of curiosity nibbled at her shell of despair.
"You're welcome," Tourville replied after a moment, and then gave her a small, fleeting smile. "It's only fair, after all, given your own record with those of our people who've, ah, found themselves your guests, shall we say?" She blinked in surprise, and he gave another, more natural smile. "In fact, I believe that my operations officer, Citizen Commander Foraker, spent some time aboard your last flagship," he added.
"Shannon Foraker?" Honor said, and he nodded.
"Indeed. I've spoken with her at some length, Commodore. And while nothing can ever be guaranteed in wartime, I hope you and your personnel will find your treatment in our hands as humane and proper as Citizen Commander Foraker found her treatment in yours." Tourville’s voice, and emotions, were sincere, yet there was an edge of warning in his tone, and Honor understood the unspoken message behind it. But then he looked directly into her eyes. "In particular, Commodore, I'm glad the Citizen Commander was able to give me some additional background on your, um, companion." He gestured at Nimitz, never unlocking his gaze from Honor's. "I understand you have a unique sort of bond with him, and Citizen Commander Foraker assures me he's far more intelligent than one might normally assume from his small size. Under the circumstances, I've given instructions that he's to remain with you, so long as he behaves himself, for the duration of your stay aboard Count Tilly. Of course, I will also have to hold you responsible for ensuring that he does behave, and I trust you, and he, will see to it that I have no cause to regret my decision."
"Thank you, Citizen Rear Admiral," Honor said quietly. "Thank you very much. And you have my word Nimitz and I will give you no cause to regret your generosity."
Tourville made a small, dismissive gesture, waving aside her thanks, and turned to Alistair McKeon, but Honor felt Nimitz relax in her arms as he sensed the sincerity of the citizen rear admiral's offer. The easing of the 'cat's tension damped the feedback effect, and she felt her muscles unknotting, yet her own reaction was more guarded than his. Treecats concentrated on the here-and-now, operating on a "sufficient unto the day" basis that put aside threats and problems which were not immediate. And because 'cats operated that way, Nimitz, despite his empathic sense, had missed the subtle subtext of Tourville’s last sentence. His assurance that Nimitz and Honor would remain together "for the duration of your stay" aboard his flagship was both a promise... and a warning that he could guarantee nothing once they left the battlecruiser.
The future yawned before her, dark and threatening, and already something inside her had begun to recognize the crushing effect helplessness could exert on a personality accustomed to controlling its own destiny and taking responsibility for its own actions. But there was nothing she could do about that, and so she drew a deep mental breath, stepped back from the things she couldn't change, and tried to take a page from Nimitz’s book.
One day at a time, she thought. That's how I have to take it: one day at a time.
Yet even as she told herself that, and knew it was true, she felt the dangerous void of her powerless future waiting to suck her under, and she was afraid.
Chapter Nineteen
Vice Admiral Sorbanne walked around the end of her desk and extended her hand to her visitor. One look at that desk was enough to tell anyone the responsibilities of Clairmont Stations CO had become more pressing, not less, with Adler’s fall, but her famed irascibility was in abeyance, and her expression was compassionate.
"Captain Greentree," she said quietly, and waved at the chairs clustered around her office coffee table. "Please, have a seat."
"Thank you, Dame Madeleine."
The Grayson officer had come by for a courtesy visit before he took what was left of Honor Harrington's squadron back to Yeltsin's Star, and he looked terrible. His face was gaunt, dark, bruised-looking shadows underlay his eyes, and his chunky body seemed to have shrunk. Even his uniform seemed to have become too big. It hung upon him, immaculately tailored and arranged, yet somehow subliminally unkempt, and although he obeyed her invitation to sit, it was as if the chairs comfort were an enemy he must resist. He sat bolt upright, feet together, clasping his peaked cap in his lap, and Sorbanne could actually feel the tension radiating from him.
She took her own chair and decided not to buzz for the coffee tray after all. This man was in no mood for refreshments, and while she had no doubt he would be polite, offering them would be almost insulting, a trivialization of his burning concern.
"I'm certain you realize why I asked you to visit me, Captain," she said instead. She'd tried to keep the formal note out of her tone, but she'd also failed, and she saw Greentree's face clench as he heard it. "I'm afraid the news isn't good," she went on, saying what had to be said, however little either of them wished to hear it. "Even with the most generous allowance for a slow passage, Prince Adrian should have reached Clairmont two days ago. I'm afraid that, as of thirteen hundred hours local time today, she will be listed as officially overdue... and presumed lost."
"I..." Greentree started to speak, then stopped, staring down at the cap in his lap, and his knuckles whitened as his hands locked upon it. He drew a deep breath, and Sorbanne leaned across the coffee table to touch him lightly on the knee.
"It's not your fault, Captain," she said gently. "You did precisely what you ought to have done, precisely what Lady Harrington wanted you to do. And my staff and I have analyzed your sensor records of the tactical situation which obtained in Adler at the time you made translation into n-space. Even if you'd gone immediately to her assistance, it would have had no bearing on whatever happened to Prince Adrian."
"But I could have tried." The anguished whisper was so faint Sorbanne doubted Greentree even realized he'd spoken aloud, but she decided to pretend the words had been meant for her.
"Of course you could have tried," she said so sharply that he looked up in surprise. "People can always try, Captain, but sometimes a naval officer has to know when not to try. When trying is the easy way out for her, or her reputation, or her conscience, but only at the cost of failing in her duty. I'm certain any number of idiots who weren't there are going to tell you you should have rushed in to rescue Lady Harrington no matter what she'd ordered you to do. No doubt you could have saved yourself all the pain those accusations are going to cause you if you had tried. But you and I both know, however much it hurts to admit it, that it would have been the wrong decision."
She held his eyes, her expression fierce.
"Even if Lady Harrington hadn't specifically ordered you to hyper out, you could never have gotten into support range of Prince Adrian. She was much too far away for you to reach before she either crossed the hyper limit and escaped on her own or was forced into action. In either case, there was nothing you could do to affect what happened to her. If you'd tried, you would have risked what probably happened to her, running into someone lying doggo in your path, and your primary responsibility, both under Lady Harrington’s direct orders and as the squadron's flag captain, was to the convoy under your escort. You're going to hear enough people second guess you, Captain. We're both adults. We know that's going to happen, and we both know some of the people doing it are going to be unfair and cruel. Don't you start doing it, as well."
"But what am I going to tell Grayson?" Greentree asked wretchedly. "I lost the Steadholder, Admiral!"
"You didn't lose anyone, Captain!" Sorbanne half-snapped. "Lady Harrington did her duty, just as you did yours. She chose to wear that uniform, to assume the risks that go with command of a squadron in time of war. And she also chose to order Prince Adrian to draw the enemy away from the convoy."
"I know," Greentree said after a moment. "I suppose I even know you're right, and I appreciate your kindness in telling me so. Someday, I'm sure, what you've said will come to mean a great deal to me. But right now, right this minute, Dame Madeleine, all I can think of is all those people on Grayson. Not because they'll blame me for it, but because they've lost her. Because we've all lost her. It just... doesn't seem possible."
"I know," Sorbanne sighed. She leaned back, running her fingers through her short hair, and managed a bleak smile. "It always seems that way with the really good ones, doesn't it? They're not like us. They're invincible, somehow, immortal. The magic will keep them safe, bring them back to us, because it has to. Because they're too important for us to lose. But the truth is that they aren't invincible... or immortal. No one is, and when they go down, the rest of us have to find some way to take up the slack."
"I don't think we can 'take up the slack' this time," Greentree said soberly. "We'll do our best, Admiral, and we'll survive." He returned her bleak smile. "We're Graysons, and Graysons know a thing or two about surviving. But find someone else who can fill her shoes? Be what she was?" He shook his head. "We'll be a poorer planet for having lost her, Dame Madeleine, and those of us who knew her will always wonder what we might have managed to do or become if we hadn't lost her."
"Maybe living up to what you think she would have expected of you will actually inspire you to accomplish even more," Sorbanne suggested gently. "A woman could have a worse legacy than that. And don't automatically assume you've 'lost her,' either. All we know right now is that Prince Adrian is overdue. Of course we have to allow for the worst, but there are almost always survivors, even when ships are lost in action, and from what I know of Lady Harrington, she had, has, the moral courage to accept responsibility for ordering a Queen's ship to surrender. I don't think she would've let Prince Adrian fight to the death if it was obvious she couldn't win, not when she had to know you'd gotten the convoy out. I'd say the odds are at least even that she's alive and a prisoner."
"You're probably right, Ma'am," Greentree replied, "and I hope you are. But the Peeps don't have a very good record for treating POWs properly, and if I were the Committee of Public Safety, Lady Harrington is one officer I wouldn't be in any hurry to exchange. I hate thinking of her in their hands, not as much as I do the thought that she may be dead, but I still hate it. And given how long this war looks like lasting, it may be years, even decades, before we get her back."
"There, I'm afraid, I can't argue with you," Sorbanne admitted with another sigh, "but years are better than never, Captain."
"Yes, Ma'am," Greentree said softly. "They are." He gazed down at his cap again for several long seconds, then stood and tucked it under his left arm.
"Thank you, Admiral Sorbanne," he said, holding out his right hand as she rose in turn. "I appreciate your taking the time to tell me personally, and your advice." He managed a smile that would have looked almost natural on a less harrowed face. "I suppose from my whining it must sound as if we Graysons have forgotten Lady Harrington is also a Manticoran, Ma'am, but we haven't. We know how badly your navy is going to miss her, as well."
"We are that, Captain," Sorbanne agreed, squeezing his hand firmly. "I'll say good-bye now," she continued. "You have to be getting back to Yeltsin, and I've got things to organize here. For your private information, I'm putting together a reconnaissance in force for Adler. We'll be sending in a dozen battlecruisers and cruisers with a superdreadnought division in support, so unless they've reinforced mighty heavily, we should kick their asses clear back to Barnett or wherever else they came from."
"I wish we could come along, Ma'am."
"I know you do, and I wish you could, too, but..." Sorbanne shrugged, and Greentree nodded and released her hand. She returned his nod, and he turned and headed for the office door, but her raised voice stopped him just before he left.
"One thing, Captain," she said quietly, and he turned back to face her. "From what I've seen of you, you're a man who believes in doing his duty, however unpleasant it may be," she told him, "but I've taken the liberty of sending a dispatch boat to Yeltsin. It left two hours ago, with the news of Lady Harrington’s presumed loss."
"I see." Greentree gazed at her for a moment, then exhaled heavily. "I understand, Dame Madeleine, and though I probably shouldn't be, I'm grateful."
"I won't say you're welcome," Sorbanne said, "because I wish no one had to tell your people she's missing, but..."
She shrugged again, and Greentree bobbed his head.
"I'll be going, then, Ma'am," he said.
A moment later the door slid shut behind him, and Madeleine Sorbanne stood gazing at it for several seconds before she drew a deep breath and nodded sharply to it.
"Captain Greentree," she said quietly, and waved at the chairs clustered around her office coffee table. "Please, have a seat."
"Thank you, Dame Madeleine."
The Grayson officer had come by for a courtesy visit before he took what was left of Honor Harrington's squadron back to Yeltsin's Star, and he looked terrible. His face was gaunt, dark, bruised-looking shadows underlay his eyes, and his chunky body seemed to have shrunk. Even his uniform seemed to have become too big. It hung upon him, immaculately tailored and arranged, yet somehow subliminally unkempt, and although he obeyed her invitation to sit, it was as if the chairs comfort were an enemy he must resist. He sat bolt upright, feet together, clasping his peaked cap in his lap, and Sorbanne could actually feel the tension radiating from him.
She took her own chair and decided not to buzz for the coffee tray after all. This man was in no mood for refreshments, and while she had no doubt he would be polite, offering them would be almost insulting, a trivialization of his burning concern.
"I'm certain you realize why I asked you to visit me, Captain," she said instead. She'd tried to keep the formal note out of her tone, but she'd also failed, and she saw Greentree's face clench as he heard it. "I'm afraid the news isn't good," she went on, saying what had to be said, however little either of them wished to hear it. "Even with the most generous allowance for a slow passage, Prince Adrian should have reached Clairmont two days ago. I'm afraid that, as of thirteen hundred hours local time today, she will be listed as officially overdue... and presumed lost."
"I..." Greentree started to speak, then stopped, staring down at the cap in his lap, and his knuckles whitened as his hands locked upon it. He drew a deep breath, and Sorbanne leaned across the coffee table to touch him lightly on the knee.
"It's not your fault, Captain," she said gently. "You did precisely what you ought to have done, precisely what Lady Harrington wanted you to do. And my staff and I have analyzed your sensor records of the tactical situation which obtained in Adler at the time you made translation into n-space. Even if you'd gone immediately to her assistance, it would have had no bearing on whatever happened to Prince Adrian."
"But I could have tried." The anguished whisper was so faint Sorbanne doubted Greentree even realized he'd spoken aloud, but she decided to pretend the words had been meant for her.
"Of course you could have tried," she said so sharply that he looked up in surprise. "People can always try, Captain, but sometimes a naval officer has to know when not to try. When trying is the easy way out for her, or her reputation, or her conscience, but only at the cost of failing in her duty. I'm certain any number of idiots who weren't there are going to tell you you should have rushed in to rescue Lady Harrington no matter what she'd ordered you to do. No doubt you could have saved yourself all the pain those accusations are going to cause you if you had tried. But you and I both know, however much it hurts to admit it, that it would have been the wrong decision."
She held his eyes, her expression fierce.
"Even if Lady Harrington hadn't specifically ordered you to hyper out, you could never have gotten into support range of Prince Adrian. She was much too far away for you to reach before she either crossed the hyper limit and escaped on her own or was forced into action. In either case, there was nothing you could do to affect what happened to her. If you'd tried, you would have risked what probably happened to her, running into someone lying doggo in your path, and your primary responsibility, both under Lady Harrington’s direct orders and as the squadron's flag captain, was to the convoy under your escort. You're going to hear enough people second guess you, Captain. We're both adults. We know that's going to happen, and we both know some of the people doing it are going to be unfair and cruel. Don't you start doing it, as well."
"But what am I going to tell Grayson?" Greentree asked wretchedly. "I lost the Steadholder, Admiral!"
"You didn't lose anyone, Captain!" Sorbanne half-snapped. "Lady Harrington did her duty, just as you did yours. She chose to wear that uniform, to assume the risks that go with command of a squadron in time of war. And she also chose to order Prince Adrian to draw the enemy away from the convoy."
"I know," Greentree said after a moment. "I suppose I even know you're right, and I appreciate your kindness in telling me so. Someday, I'm sure, what you've said will come to mean a great deal to me. But right now, right this minute, Dame Madeleine, all I can think of is all those people on Grayson. Not because they'll blame me for it, but because they've lost her. Because we've all lost her. It just... doesn't seem possible."
"I know," Sorbanne sighed. She leaned back, running her fingers through her short hair, and managed a bleak smile. "It always seems that way with the really good ones, doesn't it? They're not like us. They're invincible, somehow, immortal. The magic will keep them safe, bring them back to us, because it has to. Because they're too important for us to lose. But the truth is that they aren't invincible... or immortal. No one is, and when they go down, the rest of us have to find some way to take up the slack."
"I don't think we can 'take up the slack' this time," Greentree said soberly. "We'll do our best, Admiral, and we'll survive." He returned her bleak smile. "We're Graysons, and Graysons know a thing or two about surviving. But find someone else who can fill her shoes? Be what she was?" He shook his head. "We'll be a poorer planet for having lost her, Dame Madeleine, and those of us who knew her will always wonder what we might have managed to do or become if we hadn't lost her."
"Maybe living up to what you think she would have expected of you will actually inspire you to accomplish even more," Sorbanne suggested gently. "A woman could have a worse legacy than that. And don't automatically assume you've 'lost her,' either. All we know right now is that Prince Adrian is overdue. Of course we have to allow for the worst, but there are almost always survivors, even when ships are lost in action, and from what I know of Lady Harrington, she had, has, the moral courage to accept responsibility for ordering a Queen's ship to surrender. I don't think she would've let Prince Adrian fight to the death if it was obvious she couldn't win, not when she had to know you'd gotten the convoy out. I'd say the odds are at least even that she's alive and a prisoner."
"You're probably right, Ma'am," Greentree replied, "and I hope you are. But the Peeps don't have a very good record for treating POWs properly, and if I were the Committee of Public Safety, Lady Harrington is one officer I wouldn't be in any hurry to exchange. I hate thinking of her in their hands, not as much as I do the thought that she may be dead, but I still hate it. And given how long this war looks like lasting, it may be years, even decades, before we get her back."
"There, I'm afraid, I can't argue with you," Sorbanne admitted with another sigh, "but years are better than never, Captain."
"Yes, Ma'am," Greentree said softly. "They are." He gazed down at his cap again for several long seconds, then stood and tucked it under his left arm.
"Thank you, Admiral Sorbanne," he said, holding out his right hand as she rose in turn. "I appreciate your taking the time to tell me personally, and your advice." He managed a smile that would have looked almost natural on a less harrowed face. "I suppose from my whining it must sound as if we Graysons have forgotten Lady Harrington is also a Manticoran, Ma'am, but we haven't. We know how badly your navy is going to miss her, as well."
"We are that, Captain," Sorbanne agreed, squeezing his hand firmly. "I'll say good-bye now," she continued. "You have to be getting back to Yeltsin, and I've got things to organize here. For your private information, I'm putting together a reconnaissance in force for Adler. We'll be sending in a dozen battlecruisers and cruisers with a superdreadnought division in support, so unless they've reinforced mighty heavily, we should kick their asses clear back to Barnett or wherever else they came from."
"I wish we could come along, Ma'am."
"I know you do, and I wish you could, too, but..." Sorbanne shrugged, and Greentree nodded and released her hand. She returned his nod, and he turned and headed for the office door, but her raised voice stopped him just before he left.
"One thing, Captain," she said quietly, and he turned back to face her. "From what I've seen of you, you're a man who believes in doing his duty, however unpleasant it may be," she told him, "but I've taken the liberty of sending a dispatch boat to Yeltsin. It left two hours ago, with the news of Lady Harrington’s presumed loss."
"I see." Greentree gazed at her for a moment, then exhaled heavily. "I understand, Dame Madeleine, and though I probably shouldn't be, I'm grateful."
"I won't say you're welcome," Sorbanne said, "because I wish no one had to tell your people she's missing, but..."
She shrugged again, and Greentree bobbed his head.
"I'll be going, then, Ma'am," he said.
A moment later the door slid shut behind him, and Madeleine Sorbanne stood gazing at it for several seconds before she drew a deep breath and nodded sharply to it.