In Enemy Hands

He frowned down at his cigar for several more seconds, ru

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 Sha

"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 perso

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 perso