In Enemy Hands

"It's not your fault, Commander." She sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose hard. "You reasoned that your command would be best employed in alerting other station commanders before more ships were dispatched to Adler than in dodging around the system trying to avoid Peep pursuers, correct?" She lowered her hand, gazing at Dorcett, and the commander nodded. "That was the proper and logical judgment, and my report to the Admiralty will endorse it as such. But you're too late."

"Too late, Ma'am?" Cold, intuitive despair burned in Dorcett's belly even as she repeated the admiral's words, and Sorba

"Seventeen merchantmen and their escorts sailed from Clairmont just over five days ago, Commander Dorcett. They should arrive in Adler within the next twelve hours, and with no pickets to warn them..."

She shrugged, and Jessica Dorcett closed her eyes in horrified understanding... and guilt.

Alistair McKeon sat at the head of his dining cabin table and watched his guests. They'd pretty much come to the end of their comfortable, tasty di

Honor sat to his right, as his guest of honor, and Commander Taylor Gillespie, Prince Adrian’s executive officer, faced her across the table. Lieutenant Commander Geraldine Metcalf, McKeon’s tactical officer, sat to Gillespie's right, facing Nimitz, and Honors officers and Surgeon Lieutenant Enrico Walker, Prince Adrian's doctor, occupied the rest of the chairs around the table. James Candless shared the watch outside the hatch to McKeon’s quarters with the Marine sentry while Andrew LaFollet and Robert Whitman stood against the bulkheads, courteously unobtrusive but nonetheless an alert reminder that CruRon Eighteen's commodore was also a great feudal lady.

Some RMN officers, McKeon knew, would have found Honors title and status either ridiculous or irritating. A certain percentage of Manticorans, mostly civilians, but including a number of Queen’s officers who should know better, had never bothered to amend their mental images of the Yeltsin System. They still looked down on Grayson (and its navy) as some sort of comic opera, technically backward vest-pocket principality of religious fanatics with delusions of grandeur, and their contempt extended itself to the planet's aristocratic titles and those who held them. And however much most of the RMNs officers might respect Honors achievements, there would always be those souls who would denigrate her reputation, whether out of jealousy, resentment, or the genuine belief that she owed it all to luck.

God knows there're enough idiots like Jurgens and Lemaitre, he reflected. They actually buy the theory that she's some sort of loose warhead, that her casualties and the ships she's lost or had damaged only happened because she was too reckless to think before she went charging in! The fact that no other skipper could have brought anyone home doesn't mean squat to them. And, of course, there are always the Housemans and the Youngs. It doesn't matter what she accomplishes as far as they're concerned. He reached for his own wineglass as he watched Honor turn her head to address Walker across Nimitz, and hid a mental smile. Well, screw them. We know how good she is, and so does the Admiralty.

Honor paused in her conversation with Walker, as if she felt McKeon’s eyes upon her. She turned to smile at him, and he made a small, semisaluting gesture with his glass. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated, eyes refocusing as she gazed over his shoulder. McKeon looked a question at her, but she said nothing, so he half-turned in his chair to look in the same direction and felt his eyebrows arch in surprise.

Alex Maybach, McKeon’s personal steward, hovered over two junior stewards as they wheeled an enormous confectionery monstrosity through the pantry hatch. The cake was at least a meter long, baked in a stylized shape obviously intended to represent Prince Adrian, and blazed from end to end with burning candles, and a corner of his surprised brain wondered how Maybach could possibly have kept the thing hidden from him.

He was still wondering when someone gave the signal and the entire dining cabin burst into what a particularly charitable observer might have called singing. McKeon wheeled back to his guests, trying to glare while those of them with sufficient seniority gri

"...birrrthday to yoouuu!"

The song came to a merciful close in a burst of applause, and McKeon shook his head at Honor.

"How did you manage it?" he demanded under cover of the general hilarity. It never occurred to him to doubt that she was behind it. His own officers might have been willing to ambush him in the wardroom, but none of them would have had the nerve to try the same thing in his own quarters. Yet not even she could have pla

"You remember that long parts list and technical data file Commander Sinkowitz downloaded to your Engineering Department?" she asked with a lurking smile, and he nodded. "Well, I got him to hide a personal message to Commander Palliser in it, and Palliser relayed it to Alex. Surely you didn't think we were going to let you get away without inflicting some sort of party on you!"

"I could hope," he mock-growled, and she laughed, then held out her hand to him. The background noise faded as he gripped it, and she glanced at the others, then looked back at him.

"Happy birthday, Captain, and best wishes from all of us," she said simply. Someone started to clap again, but she raised her left hand in a silence-restoring gesture and went on. "I'm certain your ship's company has its own gift for you, it better have one if it knows what's good for it!, but I brought along a little something of my own."

She released McKeon's hand and reached out towards Robert Whitman. The armsman took three crisp strides forward and drew a small, gaily wrapped package from his tunic pocket. He handed it to his Steadholder with military precision, then came to attention at her shoulder. Andrew LaFollet braced simultaneously to attention against the bulkhead behind her, and the general air of festivity abruptly focused into something much more intense as Honor extended the package to McKeon.

He took it from her slowly, his expression a silent question, but she merely shook her head and gestured for him to unwrap it. Her armsmen's formality and her own change of demeanor made McKeon's nerves tingle, and he untied the ribbon and quickly ripped away the wrapping to reveal the simple black box under it. He glanced back up at Honor, then opened the box slowly and inhaled sharply. Its velvet-lined interior held a pair of RMN collar badges, but instead of the single gold planet of a captain of the list, each of them bore a pair of planets, identical to the ones on Honors collar. He stared at them for a dozen heartbeats, then shook himself and met Honor's gravely smiling eyes.

"Congratulations, Alistair," she said. "It won't be official until we return to Yeltsin, and I know it's supposed to be bad luck to let the cat out of the bag early. But the Admiralty sent out confirmation just before we sailed, and High Admiral Matthews knew I'd want to be the one to tell you, so he passed me the word. When you suffered your Environmental casualty, I decided your birthday was the perfect time to tell you."