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"Hedonist!" he accused, and chuckled as the 'cat bleeked in contented agreement. Then his smile faded and he looked back at Honor. "As I was saying before a certain party intervened, are you ready to talk about it?"
"What's to talk about?" Honor lowered her gaze to her fingers and plucked at the edge of the sheet. "He's here. I'm here. Somehow I have to put up with him." She shrugged. "If I have to, I will."
"So cut and dried!" he chided, and she looked back up with a wan smile.
"Maybe not entirely. But—" She shrugged again, and Paul frowned.
"Honor, does he still scare you?" he asked very gently.
She flushed, but she didn't look away, and Nimitz's purr of support vibrated into her lap.
"I don't—" she began, then sighed. "Yes, I suppose he does," she admitted, still plucking at the sheet. "Not of what he might try to do this time, so much as what he reminds me of, I guess. I had nightmares about him for years, and every time I think of him, it all comes back. Besides," she lowered her eyes at last, "it frightens me to know I hate anyone as much as I hate him."
"That's more or less what I thought." His arm tightened, easing her head down on his shoulder, and his voice rumbled in her ear. "On the other hand, you might want to think about how he feels right now."
"I really don't care how he feels!" she said tartly, and he laughed.
"Oh, but you should! Honor, Pavel Young has to be one of the most miserable officers in the Fleet right now—and it's your fault."
She sat up straight, sheet slipping down to cover Nimitz, and turned to stare at him in surprise.
"Believe it, Honor. Look at it. His career's been frozen since Basilisk, while your careers taken off like a missile. He's been off escorting merchantmen in the back of beyond or updating star charts, but you've been at the center of the action. Worse, everyone in the Fleet knows what he tried to do to you—and the way you shoved his face down in it. And where does he find himself now? Attached to a task group that you're flag captain of!" He shook his head wryly. "I can't think of anything he'd find more humiliating."
"Well, yes, but—"
"But me no buts." He covered her mouth with his fingers. "Besides, there's another side to it. Don't you realize what a coward he is?"
"Coward?"
"Absolutely. Honor, I was his exec for damned near two T-years. You get to know someone in that long, and Pavel Young is a toad. He enjoys all the perquisites of his rank, but he'd never in a million years risk his career like you risked yours in Basilisk. And if he'd been in Yeltsin, he would've set a new hyper speed record pulling out. In short, my sweet, he's got the moral—and physical—courage of a beetle, and you beat the hell out of him when you were only nineteen T-years old. Believe me, his worst nightmare is finding himself in arm's reach of you for a repeat performance!"
Honor realized her mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut, and he laughed again at her expression. She stared into his eyes, trying to see how much of what he'd just said he really meant and how much was intended only to comfort her, and her expression slowly eased as she realized it was all true. He might be wrong, but he wasn't just saying it to make her feel better.
She snuggled back down against him, grappling with a vision of Pavel Young she'd never before entertained, and Paul left her to it. She studied the hideous memory of that night in the showers from a different perspective, and this time she saw the fear—the terror—under his hatred as she took him down. And she remembered other things, as well. Remembered Pavel Young avoiding contact sports, the way he backed down on the rare occasions when one of his social equals challenged his petty cruelties....
It had never occurred to her that Young might be frightened of her. She'd certainly never been frightened of him after that night. Not in a physical sense, anyway. But if he was...
"You may be right," she said wonderingly.
"Of course I am. I'm always right," he said with studied pomposity, then oofed as a finger rammed into his ribs. "Maybe I should be scared of you, you violent woman!" he gasped, rubbing the injured spot, and gri
"I'll try," she said seriously, then sighed. "But the truth is that knowing he's unhappy doesn't really make me much happier to have him around."
"There'd be something wrong with you if it did," he said, equally seriously, then bounced his hips to tumble Nimitz off the edge of the bed. The 'cat twisted agilely in midair to hit the floor on all six feet with a solid thud, and Paul's eyes laughed at Honor. "In the meantime, if you're looking for something that that make you feel happier, I'm game if you are," he purred.
"I believe we're all here now, so let's get started." Mark Sarnow nodded from the com screen at his assembled captains and flag officers. The terminal in Paul's quarters was too small to display all the others at anything like a normal image size, but it was big enough for Honor to tell who was who. The admiral's screen, of course, was big enough to show him every detail, and she was happy her uniform hadn't gotten rumpled last night.
"The first item, of course, is a critique of yesterday's exercise," Sarnow went on. "An exercise which, I might note in passing, seemed to go better for some of us than for others." His cheerful tone took the potential sting from his words, and Commodore Banton gri
"What you mean, Sir, is that some of us got taken to the cleaners," she replied. Her eyes moved to Honor's image, and she shook her head. "That was some major league sneakiness, Dame Honor. You suckered me completely."
"I was lucky, Ma'am."
"Lucky!" Banton snorted, then shrugged "Well, I suppose you were, but some people seem to make their own luck. Mind you, I intend to pin your ears back next time, but don't sell yourself short."
Two or three other voices murmured agreement, and Honor's face heated.
"I agree with Commodore Banton's assessment," Sarnow said firmly, "which brings me to one of the points I wanted to raise. We're already pla
"You mean to sneak into missile range on a powered-down intercept while they look the other way?" Commodore Prentis said with a thoughtful frown. "Be a bit risky against a real wall of battle, wouldn't it, Sir? If they picked up our fire control before we let fly—"
"Hold it, Jack," Banton cut in. "The Admiral may be onto something. Even if they do spot us, at optimum missile range we'd have two or three minutes to bring our impellers up. If we hold them at maximum readiness, we can get them up in ninety seconds. Sidewall, too—and we'd still get our launch off."
"True," Captain Rubenstein said, "but there's still—"
The debate was off and ru
The discussion moved on to finer details of the maneuvers and ended with an update from Ernestine Corell and Commander Turner on the fire control modifications for the parasite pods. Things were looking good all around, Honor decided. There was still an undertone of anxiety, for the task group was only too well aware of how naked it was out here by itself, but it was taking its cue from Sarnow's battlecruiser skippers and digging in to do something about its situation.