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She looked into the mirror, making herself accept it, telling herself Montoya was right—that it could be fixed, whatever it looked like—but all of her selfassurances were a frail shield against her revulsion at what she saw.
" 'V look' be'er," she said, and watched in numb horror as the untouched right side of her mouth and face moved normally. She drew a deep breath and tried again, very slowly. "I've looked better," she got out, and if it still sounded strange and hesitant, at least it sounded more like her.
"Yes, Ma'am, you have," Montoya agreed.
"Well." She wrenched her eye from the mirror and looked up at Venizelos. "Might as well get up, I guess."
The words came out almost clearly. Perhaps if she remembered the need to concentrate on speaking slowly and deliberately it wouldn't be too bad.
"I'm not sure that's a good i—" Montoya began.
"Skipper, I can handle things un—" Venizelos started simultaneously, but they both broke off as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. She put her feet on the deck, and Montoya reached out as if to stop her.
"Captain, you may not be able to feel it, but you've taken one hell of a beating! Commander Venizelos has things under control here, and Commander Truman's doing just fine with the squadron. They can manage a while longer."
"The doc's right, Ma'am," Venizelos weighed in. "We've got everything covered." His voice sharpened as Honor ignored them both and heaved herself to her feet. "Oh, for God's sake, Skipper! Go back to bed!"
"No." She gripped the bed for balance as the deck curtsied under her. "As you say, Doctor, I can't feel it," she said carefully. "I might as well take advantage of that. Where's my uniform?"
"You don't need one, because you're getting right back into bed!"
"I had one when I came in." Her eye lit on a locker. She started towards it, and if her course wavered just a bit, she ignored that.
"It's not in there," Montoya said quickly. She paused. "Your steward took it away. He said he'd try to get the blood out of it," he added pointedly.
"Then get me another one."
"Captain—" he began in even stronger tones, and she swung to face him. The right corner of her mouth quirked in an ironic smile that only made the hideous deadness of the left side of her face more grotesque, but there was something almost like a twinkle in her remaining eye.
"Fritz, you can get me a uniform or watch me walk out of here in this ridiculous gown," she told him. "Now which is it going to be?"
Andreas Venizelos rose as Commander Truman stepped through the hatch. Honor didn't. She'd carried Nimitz here in her arms instead of on her shoulder because she still felt too unsteady to offer him his usual perch, and she had no intention of displaying her knees' irritating weakness any more than she could help.
She looked up at her second in command and braced herself for Truman's reaction. She'd already seen MacGuiness' shocked anger when he brought her the demanded uniform and saw her face, and Venizelos wasn't making any effort to hide his opinion that she was pushing herself too hard, so she wasn't too surprised when Truman rocked back on her heels.
"My God, Honor! What are you doing out of sickbay?!" Truman's green eyes clung to her wounded face for just a moment, then moved deliberately away, focusing on her single uncovered eye. "I've got most of the fires under control, and I'd have been perfectly happy coming down there to see you."
"I know." Honor waved to a chair and watched her subordinate sit. "But I'm not dead yet," she went on, hating the slowness of her own speech, "and I'm not going to lie around."
Truman glared at Venizelos, and the Exec shrugged.
"Fritz and I tried, Commander. It didn't seem to do much good."
"No, it didn't." Honor agreed. "So don't try anymore. Just tell me what's going on."
"Are you sure you're up to this? You— I'm sorry, Honor, but you have to know you look like hell, and you don't sound too good, either."
"I know. Mostly it's just my lips, though," she half-lied. She touched the left side of her mouth and wished she could feel it. "You talk. I'll listen. Start with the Protector. Is he alive?"
"Well, if you're sure." Truman sounded doubtful, but Honor nodded firmly and the commander shrugged. "All right—and, yes, he and his family are all unhurt. It's been—" she checked her chrono "—about twenty minutes since my last update, and only about five hours since the assassination attempt, so I can't give you any hard and firm details. As far as I can make out, though, you wound up square in the middle of a coup attempt."
"Clinkscales?" she asked, but Truman shook her head.
"No, that was my first thought, too, when we thought it was Security people, but they weren't real Security men, after all. They were members of something called `The Brotherhood of Maccabeus,' some kind of fundamentalist underground no one even suspected existed." Truman paused and frowned. "I'm not too sure I'm entirely ready to accept that they didn't know anything about it."
"I believe it, Ma'am." Venizelos turned to Honor. "I've been monitoring the planetary news nets a bit more closely than Commander Truman's had time for, Skipper. Aside from some pretty graphic video," he looked at her a bit oddly, "it's all conjecture with a hefty dose of hysteria, but one thing seems pretty clear. Nobody down there ever heard of the `Maccabeans,' and no one's sure what they were trying to accomplish, either."
Honor nodded. She wasn't surprised the Graysons were in an uproar. Indeed, it would have amazed her if they hadn't been. But if Protector Benjamin was unhurt there was still a government, and at the moment, that was all she really had time to concern herself with.
"The evacuation?" she asked Truman.
"Underway," the commander assured her. "The freighters pulled out an hour ago, and I sent Troubadour along as far as the hyper limit to be on the safe side. Her sensors should give them plenty of warning to evade any bogeys they meet before translating."
"Good." Honor rubbed the right side of her face. The muscles on that side ached from having to do almost the whole job of moving her jaw by themselves, and the thought of trying to chew appalled her.
"Any movement out of the Masadans?" she asked after a moment.
"None. We know they know we're here, and I'd have expected them to try something by now, but there's not a sign of them."
"Command Central?"
"Not a peep out of them, Ma'am," Venizelos said. "Your Commander Brentworth is still aboard, but even he can't get much out of them right now."
"I wouldn't be too surprised by that, Honor," Truman cautioned. "If these crazies really did blind-side Grayson Security, they have to be worrying about moles in the military, at least until they get some kind of fix on how extensive the plot really was. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some idiot's already come up with the theory that what happened to their navy was part of some Machiavellian `betrayal by the high command' to set up the assassination."
"So we're all there is for now," Honor said even more slowly than her damaged mouth required. "What's the status on Troubadour's alpha node?"
"The Grayson yard people confirm Alistair's original estimate," Truman replied. "It's completely gone, and they can't repair it. Their Warshawski technology's even cruder than I thought, and their components simply won't mate with ours, but their standard impellers are a lot closer to our levels, and Lieutenant Anthony got with their chief shipwright before I sent Troubadour off with the freighters. By the time she gets back, the Graysons should have run up jury-rigged beta nodes to replace the damaged beta and alpha nodes. She still won't have Warshawski capability, but she'll be back up to five-twenty gees for max acceleration."