The Honor of the Qween

"Exactly. And if there's a chance most of their Havenite firepower is elsewhere—" Matthews suggested.

Honor looked at him for a moment and realized she was rubbing her face much harder. She made herself stop before she further damaged the insensitive skin, then nodded decisively.

"Absolutely, Admiral. How soon can your units be ready to move out?"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

"Skipper?"

Thomas Theisman jerked awake, and his executive officer stepped back quickly as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the couch.

"What?" he asked thickly, rubbing at sleep-crusted eyes. "Is it the Captain?"

"No, Sir," Lieutenant Hillyard said unhappily, "but we're picking up an awful lot of impeller signatures headed this way."

"This way? Towards Uriel?"

"Slap bang towards Blackbird, Skipper." Hillyard met his eyes with an anxious grimace.

"Oh, fuck." Theisman shoved himself erect and wished he'd never left the People's Republic. "What kind of signatures? Harrington's?"

"No, Sir."

"I'm in no mood for bad jokes, Al!"

"I'm not kidding, Skipper. We don't see her anywhere."

"Damn it, there's no way the Graysons would come after us alone! Harrington has to be out there!"

"If she is, we haven't seen her yet, Sir."

"Goddamn it." Theisman massaged his face, trying to knead some life back into his brain. Captain Yu was forty hours overdue, the reports coming up from moon-side were enough to turn a man's stomach, and now this shit.

"All right." He straightened with a spine-cracking pop and picked up his cap. "Let's get to the bridge and see what's going on, Al."

"Yes, Sir." The exec followed him from the cabin. "We only picked them up about five minutes ago," he went on. "We've been getting some fu

"Um." Theisman rubbed his chin, and Hillyard looked at his profile.

"Skipper," he said hesitantly, "tell me if I'm out of line, but have you heard anything about what's happening ground-side?"

"You are out of line!" The lieutenant recoiled, and Theisman grimaced. "Sorry, Al. And, yes, I've heard, but—" He slammed a fist explosively into the bulkhead beside him, then jerked to a stop and swung to face his exec.

"There's not a goddamned thing I can do, Al. If it was up to me, I'd shoot every one of the sons-of-bitches—but don't you breathe a word of that, even to our people!" He held Hillyard's eyes fiercely until the exec nodded choppily, then rubbed his face again.

"Jesus, I hate this stinking job! The Captain never figured on this, Al. I know how he'd feel about it, and I made my own position as clear to Franks as I can, but I can't queer the deal for the Captain when I don't know how he'd handle it. Besides," he smiled crookedly, "we don't have any Marines."

"Yes, Sir." Hillyard looked down at the deck, and his mouth worked. "It just makes me feel so ... dirty."

"You and me both, Al. You and me both." Theisman sighed. He started back down the passage, and Hillyard had to half-trot to keep up with him. "When I get home—if I get home—" Theisman muttered savagely, "I'm go

"Of course not, Sir." Hillyard took another few steps and looked back up at his commander. "Want a little help in that alley, Skipper?"

She missed Nimitz. The back of her command chair seemed empty and incomplete without him, but Nimitz was tucked away in his life-support module. He hadn't been any happier at being parted than she was, yet he'd been there before, and he'd settled down without demur when she sealed him in. Now she put the lonely feeling out of her mind and studied her plot.

A solid wedge of LACs led her ship, its corners anchored by Grayson's three surviving starships, while Troubadour and Apollo were tucked in tight on Fearless's port and starboard quarters. It was scarcely an orthodox formation, especially since it put the best sensor suites behind the less capable Grayson units, but if it worked the way it was supposed to ...

She heard a soft sound and looked up to see Commander Brentworth playing with his helmet beside her chair. His bulky vac gear marked him as a stranger among her bridge crew's skin suits, and, unlike everyone else, he had nothing to do but stand there and worry.

He felt her eye and looked down, and she smiled her lopsided smile.

"Feeling out of place, Mark?" she asked quietly, and he gave her a sheepish nod. "Don't worry about it. We're glad you're aboard."

"Thanks, Ma'am. I just feel sort of useless with nothing to do, I guess." He nodded at her plot. "In fact, the whole Fleet probably feels that way right now."

"Well, we certainly can't have that, Commander!" a cheerful voice said, and Honor's good eye twinkled, as Venizelos appeared on the other side of her chair. "Tell you what," the exec went on, "leave us the Peeps, and we'll let you have all the Masadans. How's that?"

"It sounds fair to me, Commander." Brentworth gri

"Good enough." Venizelos looked down at his captain. "Steve makes it another hour and fifty-eight minutes, Skipper. Think they know we're here?"

"They're down to two-six-oh-five-four KPS, Sir," Theisman's plotting officer reported as Principality's captain stepped onto his bridge. "Range niner-two-point-two million klicks. They should come to rest right on top of us in another one-one-eight minutes."

Theisman crossed to the main tactical display and glowered at it. A tight-packed triangle of impeller signatures came towards him across it, decelerating at the maximum three hundred seventy-five gravities of a Grayson LAC. Three brighter, more powerful signatures glowed at its corners, but they weren't Harrington. Principality had good mass readings on them, and they had to be what was left of the Graysons.

"Anybody in position to see around that wall?"

"No, Sir. Aside from Virtue, everybody's right here."

"Um." Theisman rubbed an eyebrow and cursed himself for not convincing Franks to send one of the Masadan destroyers to Endicott as soon as Harrington returned. The admiral had refused on the grounds that Thunder of God was already two hours overdue and so must be back momentarily, and the most Theisman had been able to get him to do was send Virtue out to Thunder's pla

He thrust that thought aside and concentrated on the plot. It certainly looked as if Grayson had launched this little expedition without Harrington, but that would have required an awful lot of guts—not to say stupidity—if they knew what they were getting into.

But did they? Obviously they knew something, or they wouldn't be here at all. Theisman didn't know how they'd tumbled to the Masadan presence on Blackbird, yet it seemed unlikely Harrington had recovered any usable data from Danville's LACs. No other Masadan ships had been in range to assist Danville (luckily for them), but the destroyer Power had been close enough for long-range grav readings, and Harrington hadn't even slowed down. That suggested there hadn't been any wreckage large enough to search, which was precisely what Theisman would have expected.