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"With command experience, or on the staff?"
"Command experience."
"Commodore Matthews, unless you want to bring someone out of retirement," Lord Mayhew said without hesitation, "and he's a good one, Ben." The younger Mayhew smiled almost shyly at Honor. "You won't have any problems working with him, Ma'am."
"Commodore Matthews it is, then," the Protector said, and despite herself, Honor sighed with relief. Mayhew heard it and smiled at her.
"I gather you're not really accustomed to high-stakes diplomacy, Captain Harrington?"
"No, Sir, I certainly am not," she replied with feeling.
"Well, you did rather well, then," he told her. "In fact, you may have done even better than you realize, considering the domestic situation." Captain Fox made a small sound, and the Protector gri
Fox abandoned his wooden expression to give his Protector a very old-fashioned look, then glowered at Honor and resumed his parade-ground stance beside Mayhew's chair.
"Tell me, Captain," Mayhew said lightly, "are you a student of Old Earth history, by any chance?"
"I beg your pardon, Sir?" Honor blinked at the question, then shrugged. "I'd hardly claim to be an authority on the subject, Sir."
"Neither was I, before my father sent me to Harvard, but you remind me rather strongly of Commodore Perry at this particular moment. Are you familiar with his career?"
"Perry?" Honor thought for a moment. "The ... American commander at the Battle of Lake Champlain?"
"Lake Erie, I believe," Mayhew corrected, "but that was Oliver Perry. I was referring to his brother Matthew."
"Oh. Then I'm afraid the answer is no, Sir."
"A pity. He was a bit on the pompous side, I'm sorry to say, but he also dragged the Empire of Japan kicking and screaming out of its isolation in the Fourth Century Ante Diaspora. In fact, it was Japan that got me interested in Perry, though the parallel between Grayson and the Japanese only goes so far, of course. They wanted to be left alone, whereas we've been trying for two centuries to get someone—anyone!—to `drag' us into the present, but I'm begi
"I see." Honor regarded him cautiously. "I trust you don't believe those consequences will be unhappy ones, Sir?"
"On the contrary," Mayhew said as the dining room door opened and two uniformed Security men stepped into the anteroom-like entry alcove. He glanced up casually as the newcomers walked towards Captain Fox and a second pair followed them into the dining room. "I expect they'll be highly beneficial, though it may take some of us a while to—"
Fox frowned as the new arrivals approached him, then relaxed as one of them extended a dispatch case. He reached out to take it ... and Nimitz suddenly catapulted from his stool with a snarl like tearing canvas.
Honor's head whipped around as the treecat landed on the back of the Security man closest to her. The guard howled as the treecat's true-feet sank centimeter-long claws bone-deep into his shoulders, and his howl became a shriek of raw, terrified agony as Nimitz's uppermost limbs reached around his head and scimitar-clawed fingers buried themselves to the knuckles in his eyes.
Blood and fluids erupted down the shrieking guard's cheeks, and his hands rose frantically to clutch at his assailant. But his sounds died in a horrible, whistling gurgle as the clawed hand-paws of the treecat's middle limbs ripped his throat open to the spine.
The dead man crumpled like a felled tree, but the 'cat was already somersaulting away from him. His rippling snarl rose even higher as he slammed into a second newcomer, all six sets of claws ripping and tearing, and Fox and his men stared at him in horror. They'd been surprised by the length of his sixtycentimeter body when he uncoiled from Honor's shoulder, but he was narrow and supple as a ferret, and they hadn't realized he massed over nine kilos of bone and hard muscle. It wasn't really their fault—Honor had grown so accustomed to his weight over the years that it scarcely even inconvenienced her, and they hadn't made sufficient allowance for how easily her own Sphinx-bred muscles let her carry him.
Yet whatever their reasoning, they'd dismissed him as a simple pet, without guessing how powerful and well-armed he actually was. Nor had they even suspected his intelligence, and the totally unexpected carnage stu
Captain Fox grabbed the Protector without ceremony, yanking him out of his chair by brute force and throwing him behind him as he went for his own sidearm. Lord Mayhew recoiled as the dead man's blood splashed the tablecloth and spouted over him, but he, too, reacted with admirable speed. He grabbed both his sisters-in-law, shoved them under the table, and fell across them to protect them with his own body.
Honor saw it all only peripherally. She'd always known Nimitz could feel her emotions, but she'd never knowingly felt his.
This time she did—and as she also felt the emotions of the fresh "Security detachment" through him, she exploded out of her chair. The heel of her hand slammed into the face of the newcomer closest to the Protector, and cartilage crunched horribly as she drove his nose up into his brain—just as his companion dropped the dispatch case, raised his other hand, and fired at pointblank range into Captain Fox's chest.
The handgun made a whining noise and a sound like an axe sinking into a log, and the Security captain flew backward, his pistol less than half-drawn. His corpse knocked Mayhew to the carpet, and a corner of Honor's mind cringed as she recognized the sound of an off-world sonic disrupter.
She reached out and caught the killer by the nape of the neck with one hand and reached past him to clamp her other over his gun before he could get a clear shot at Mayhew. She missed the gun but captured his wrist, and he dropped the weapon with a howl of anguish as her fingers squeezed and the hand on his neck yanked him off the floor. His eyes started to roll towards her in disbelief as he hurtled through the air, and then she slammed him back over the table. Dishes flew, crystal shattered, and his eyes bulged, shock become agony as the point of her elbow smashed down. It hit his solar plexus like a hammer, driven by all of her weight and strength, and she whipped away from him, leaving him to die as his lungs and heart forgot to function.
Nimitz's second victim was down, screaming on the floor as he clutched at the remnants of his face, but there were more whining disrupter shots in the hall—mixed with the single, explosive crack of a regular firearm. A horde of fresh "Security" men charged through the door, all armed with disrupters, and Honor snatched a heavy metal tray from the table. It flew across the room, as accurate as Nimitz's frisbee but far more deadly, and the leading intruder's forehead erupted in blood. He went down, tripping the man behind him, tangling them all up briefly, and then the chaos became total as the Protector's bodyguards suddenly realized who the enemy truly was.
Gunfire thundered across the dining room, bullets crisscrossing with the solid-sound fists of disrupter bolts. Bodies went down on both sides, and aside from the disrupters, there was no way Honor could tell who was friend and who was foe.
But Nimitz was unhampered by any confusion. The high-pitched snarl of his battle cry wailed in her ears as he hurled himself into the face of another assassin like a furry, six-limbed buzz saw. His victim went down shrieking, and the man beside him swung his weapon towards the treecat, but Honor flew across the carpet towards him. Her right leg snapped straight, her boot crunched into his shoulder, breaking it instantly, and a hammer blow crushed his larynx as she came down on top of him.