Flag In Exile

Honor gazed at him in masklike silence, but she felt her own surprise at his offer. He had to know how tempted she'd be to replace him, just as he knew she could, whatever he might want. Yet rather than try to avoid the issue or finesse his way around it, he'd brought it out into the open and all but offered to go if that was what she wanted. He was a man who'd lost everything, one who'd somehow overcome almost unimaginable odds to find his way into a starship command once more, but his eyes were steady, and the quiet sincerity behind them flowed to her through Nimitz.

It would be so easy to do it, she thought. To have him replaced rather than deal with her own ambiguous emotions. And there was another factor. As her flag captain, Yu would be her tactical deputy, the individual charged with executing her orders and maneuvers. If by some chance her squadron was called to action, he'd be positioned to do incalculable harm if some fragment of loyalty to the People's Republic still lived deep inside him, and could even he know with certainty whether or not one did? If it came time to fire on the ships of his birth nation, possibly on officers and men he'd helped train, could he do it? More to the point, could she take the risk that he couldn't?

"I was surprised to see you, Captain," she said, sparring for time as thought and counter-thought warred in her mind. "I assumed you were still assigned to ONI back in the Star Kingdom."

"No, My Lady. Your Admiralty, ah, loaned me to Grayson two years ago at High Admiral Matthews' request. The Office of Shipbuilding wanted to pick my brains about Havenite design and tactical doctrine before it wrote the specifications for Grayson's first locally built ships of the wall."

"I see. And now?" Honor made a small gesture at the blue-on-blue uniforms they both wore, and Yu smiled faintly.

"And now I'm an officer of the GSN, My Lady, and a Grayson citizen."

"You are?" Honor couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice, and Yu gave another thin smile.

"I'd never met a Grayson before Operation Jericho, Lady Harrington. When I did meet some of them, I was... impressed. I suppose I'd assumed one religious fanatic was very like another, that there was nothing to choose between Masada and Grayson, but I was wrong. Wrong to think Graysons were fanatics, and wrong to equate them with Masadans."

"So you just moved out here? Just like that?"

"Hardly just like 'that,' My Lady," Yu said wryly. "I know I'm still paying my dues. They need people with my qualifications, but there were, and are, people out here who haven't forgiven me for Jericho." He shrugged. "I can accept that. In fact, the thing that amazed me was how many of them were willing to if not forgive at least accept that there'd never been anything personal in it. That I was simply following my orders."

He looked straight into her eyes with the last sentence, and Honor nodded, acknowledging the implications.

"But I also found, My Lady, that I like Graysons. They can be the most stubborn, infuriating people I've ever met, but I can't quite imagine anyone who wasn't those things accomplishing as much as they have so quickly. Lady Harrington, I couldn't go 'home' to the People's Republic if I wanted to. I didn't, and don't want to, but even if I did, the People's Republic I served doesn't exist anymore. I accepted that I could never go home when I requested asylum from Manticore; what's happened since only makes that more true. I suppose I could even tell myself that taking service with Grayson against Pierre's people is an act of loyalty to the old regime, but, frankly, what happens to the Republic isn't very important to me anymore."

"No? Then what is important, Captain?"

"Following my own conscience, My Lady," Yu said quietly. "That's not something the People's Navy ever gave its officers much opportunity to do. I knew it at the time, but it never occurred to me that anything else was possible. It was simply the way it was... until, suddenly, I wasn't in the PN anymore. I don't know if a Manticoran can truly understand just how big a shock to my system that was. And then I was sent back here, given a chance to get to know the people I almost helped Masada conquer, and..."

He paused, then gave a tiny shrug. "I don't suppose I'll ever be a 'real' Grayson in their eyes, not the way you are, but I'm not a Peep anymore, either, and this is my home now. I came back here originally because Manticore told me to and, perhaps, because I saw it as a sort of apology. Now that I'm here, I want to help defend it, and I imagine..." he smiled again, this time with an edge of true humor "...that one reason High Admiral Matthews made me your flag captain was to have someone he trusted and who had the experience to evaluate my performance fully ride herd on me. I'm a valuable resource, but it would be a bit much to expect him to forget my first visit to Yeltsin."

"I see." Honor leaned back, brow furrowed in thought, conscious of Andrew LaFollet's silent presence behind her and tasting Yu's sincerity through Nimitz. She wanted to turn in her chair and look back at Mercedes Brigham, to see what she thought of Alfredo Yu, for Mercedes had her own reasons to feel both gratitude and hate for him. She'd been HMS Madrigal's executive officer. It was her ship and her people Yu's ambush had killed, but it was also Yu who'd demanded the Masadans recover Madrigal's survivors. And, Honor thought grimly, it was Yu who'd turned those survivors over to the Masadans.

He couldn't have known what would happen. The man who'd insisted that the rules of war be followed would never have handed helpless prisoners over to people he expected to murder them. But that didn't change the fact that of all Madrigal's captured female perso

Honor shivered as the thought sent a stab of pain through her. She had trouble enough facing her own wounds; how in the name of God did someone like Mercedes deal with her nightmares? And what right did Honor have to put her in the position of serving on a daily basis with the man who'd been responsible, however unknowingly, for the stuff those nightmares were made of?

She closed her eyes, and her hands stroked gently, caressingly, down Nimitz’s spine. Every instinct screamed for her to accept Yu's offer and replace him, but her professional judgment insisted just as stubbornly that he was too valuable, too potentially useful to her, to be discarded. She bit the inside of her lip as uncertainty washed about within her like acid, or like proof she'd been right to doubt her own wounded strength.

She closed her eyes tighter and fought to empty her mind of confusion, to summon the detached logic with which Admiral Courvosier had trained her to approach command decisions. And then, almost against her will, Mercedes Brigham’s face flashed before her, and she saw once more the small smile Mercedes had given her as she blocked everyone else from the seats behind Honor and Captain Yu. Blocked them, Honor realized, because she'd known what Yu intended to say... and given him the space and privacy in which to say it.

The memory of Mercedes' smile stilled the roiling currents of her own emotions. It didn't answer her questions, but somehow it made them only questions, not a quagmire of warring instincts that threatened to suck her under, and she opened her eyes to look Yu in the face.