War Of Honor

"No," he said mildly, picking up his napkin and brushing crumbs from his lips. "I don't know what you hate most about our political lords and masters, TJ. But I feel somehow certain that you can scarcely wait to enlighten me."

"Um?" Wix stopped just inside the door, alerted by his superior's tone of voice that he'd just committed a social faux pas. Then he had the grace to blush. "Oops. Sorry, Boss. I forgot it was breakfast time for you."

"For me? Most people eat breakfast even earlier than I do, TJ—between the time they get up and the time they begin work," Kare pointed out. Then he noticed Wix's somewhat scruffy appearance and sighed. "TJ, you did go home last night at some point, didn't you?"

"Well, actually . . . no," Wix admitted. Kare drew a deep breath, but before he could deliver yet another homily on the desirability of something resembling a normal sleep schedule, the younger scientist hurried on.

"I was going to, honest. But one thing led to another, and, well—" He twitched one shoulder in impatient dismissal. "Anyway," he went on more enthusiastically, "I was looking at that latest data run—you know, the one Argonaut pulled in last week?"

Kare recognized the futility of trying to introduce any other topic until Wix had run down about this one and resigned himself.

"Yes," he said. "I know the data you're talking about."

"Well," Wix went on, starting to bounce around the office in his excitement, "I went back and reran them, and damned if I don't think we've actually hit the proper approach vector. Oh," he waved one hand as Kare let his chair come suddenly back upright, "we still have a lot of refining to do, and I want to make at least two or three more runs to get a broader observational base to double-check my rough calculations. But unless I'm mistaken, the analysis is going to confirm that we've hit the target pretty much on the nose."

"I wish," Kare said after a moment, "that you'd stop doing this, TJ."

"Doing what?" Wix asked, obviously confused by his superior's tone of voice.

"Finding things ahead of schedule," Kare told him. "After the Director and I spent days hammering home the need for us to do all of the time-consuming detail work, you turn around and find the damned approach vector a good four months early! Do you have any idea how hard this is going to make it to convince the politicos that they should listen to us the next time we tell them we need more time to complete our research?"

"Of course I do," Wix told him in a moderately affronted tone. "That's what I hate most about our political lords and masters, if you'll remember the way I began this conversation. Besides, it really sours my day to start it off by literally stumbling across something which I ought to feel only pleased about finding and then realize how much it pisses me off to realize I'm going to do exactly what the idiots I work for wanted done all along. Well, that and the way the assholes are going to steal the credit for it."

"You do realize how paranoid—if not petty—this entire conversation makes two reasonably intelligent adults sound, don't you?" Kare asked with a wry grin, and Wix shrugged.

"I don't feel particularly paranoid, and I don't think we're the petty ones. In fact, that's why it pisses me off—I don't like working for a prime minister who's so damned petty. Besides, as soon as we tell them about it, that asshole Oglesby is going to be back over here for another news conference. At which you and Admiral Reynaud will be doing well to get a single word in edgewise."

"Oh, no, TJ! Not this time," Kare said with a seraphic smile. "You found it, so this time you're the one who's going to be doing well to get a single word in edgewise."

"That was delicious, Your Grace," Mercedes Brigham sighed, sitting back from the breakfast table with a comfortable sense of repletion. The plate before her bore the sticky remains of her eggs Benedict's hollandaise sauce and a few bacon crumbs, while the rind of a musk melon stood up like the keel of a stripped ark on a smaller plate, accompanied by two purple grapes which had somehow escaped the massacre of their fellows.

Honor's breakfast, as always, had been considerably more substantial, as a concession to her enhanced metabolism, and she smiled at Brigham's comment as she reached for the cocoa carafe and poured herself another mug.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said, her smile broadening as James MacGuiness stepped in from his pantry with a fresh cup of the hot tea her chief of staff preferred. "Of course, I'm not the person you ought to be complimenting about it."

"No, and I wasn't complimenting you," Brigham told her. "I was simply commenting. The person I intended to compliment about it wasn't here at the moment. Now he is." She sniffed and looked up at MacGuiness. "That was delicious, Mac," she said with dignity.

"Thank you, Commodore," MacGuiness said gravely. "Would you like another egg?"

"Some of us, unfortunately, have to be a bit more careful than others about what we eat," Brigham said in regretful tones.

"Cheer up, Mercedes," Honor told her while Nimitz bleeked a laugh of his own around a stalk of celery. "There's always lunch."

"And I'll look forward to it," Brigham assured her with a chuckle while she smiled at the steward.

"I'll do my best not to disappoint," MacGuiness assured her. He was just about to say something more when the com attention signal chimed softly. He made a small face—the grimace of irritation he saved for moments when the outside universe intruded itself into his admiral's mealtimes—and then stepped over to the bulkhead-mounted terminal and pressed the accept key.

"Admiral's day cabin, MacGuiness speaking," he told the pickup in decidedly repressive accents.

"Bridge, Officer of the Watch, speaking," Lieutenant Ernest Talbot, Werewolf's communications officer, replied in a respectful voice. "Sorry to interrupt Her Grace's breakfast, Mr. MacGuiness. But the Captain asked me to inform her that Perimeter Security has just picked up an unidentified incoming hyper footprint. A big one, twenty-two light-minutes from the primary. According to CIC, there are over twenty major drive sources."

MacGuiness's eyebrows rose, and he started to turn towards Honor, but she was by his side before the movement was more than half completed. She laid one hand on his shoulder and leaned a bit closer to the pickup herself.

"This is the Admiral, Lieutenant Talbot," she said. "I assume that the grav-pulse challenge has already been sent?"

"Of course, Your Grace." Talbot sounded suddenly crisper. "It was transmitted as soon as they were picked up, exactly—" he paused, obviously checking the time "—seven minutes and forty-five seconds ago. There's been no response."

"I see." Honor refrained from pointing out that if there had been a response, the hyper footprint would scarcely have still been unidentified. Then she felt a tiny pang of guilt at the thought. Good officers learned never to assume that someone else was aware of all they were aware of, and subordinates who were willing to risk sounding foolish to be certain their superiors had all relevant information were to be cherished, not scorned.

"Well," she went on, "they could still be friendlies who're just a little slow responding, I suppose." Her tone was that of someone thinking out loud, and Talbot made no response. Nor was any required. Both of them knew that by now every Manticoran or Allied man-of-war was equipped with FTL grav-pulse transmitters . . . and that no Allied com officer was "slow" enough to not have responded by now.

"Still," Honor continued, "this isn't a good time to take chances. My compliments to Captain Cardones, Lieutenant, and ask him to bring the task force to Action Stations."