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"We can get around it eventually," the white-faced Hart promised. "It's only a matter of working through the command trees, unless ..."
"Unless what?" Simonds demanded as the Lieutenant paused.
"Unless it's a hard-wired lock, Sir," Hart said in a tiny voice. "In that case, we'll have to trace the master circuits till we find it, and without Commander Valentine—"
"Don't make excuses!" Simonds screamed. "If you hadn't been so fast to shoot Ma
"But, Sir, we don't know it was him! I mean—"
"Idiot!" The Sword backhanded the lieutenant viciously, then whirled to the brigadier. "Put this man under arrest for treason against the Faith!"
Captain Yu sat in the copilot's flight couch, watching his beautiful ship fall away astern, and the bitter silence from the pi
A part of Alfredo Yu wished he hadn't made it out, for his shame cut far deeper than theirs. That was his ship back there, and the men aboard it were his men, and he'd failed them. He'd failed his government, too, but the People's Republic wasn't the sort of government that engendered personal loyalty, and not even the knowledge that the Navy would take vengeance upon him for his failure mattered beside his abandonment of his men. Yet he'd had no choice but to save as many as he could, and he knew it.
He sighed and punched up a chart of the system. Somewhere out there was a hiding place where he and his men could conceal themselves until the battle squadrons Ambassador Lacy had summoned arrived. All he had to do was find it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Honor cut another morsel of steak and slid it into her mouth. Eating, she'd found, was a monumental pain when only one side of your face worked. The left side of her mouth was useless for chewing, and she had a humiliating tendency to discover food was dribbling down her dead cheek and chin only when it dripped onto her tunic. She'd made progress over the past few days, but not enough to be willing to eat with an audience.
But at least worrying about eating was fairly mundane, almost comforting, compared to other things. Five days had passed since Apollo's departure. If the Masadans were going to try something more—and despite all she'd said to Venizelos about the insanity of their doing so, she remained convinced they were—she knew it would be soon. Yet, to her own surprise, she could think about it almost calmly. She'd reached a state of balance, of acceptance. She was committed. She'd done all she could to prepare herself and her people. All that remained was to meet whatever came, and once that was accepted, grief and guilt and hatred, like terror, had faded into a strange sort of serenity. She knew it wouldn't last. It was simply the way she adjusted to the waiting, but she was grateful for it.
She chewed very carefully, keeping her numb i
"Bleek?" Nimitz said from his end of the table.
"Beats me," she told him, and waited. After a moment, MacGuiness poked his head through the hatch with the expression of severe disapproval he reserved for occasions when his captain's meals were interrupted.
"Excuse me, Ma'am, but Commander Venizelos is on the com." The steward sniffed. "I told him you're eating, but he says it's important."
Honor's good eye twinkled, and she used her napkin to hide the smile that twitched the right corner of her mouth. MacGuiness had guarded her rare moments of privacy, especially during meals, like an irritable mastiff ever since she'd been wounded, and he would never forgive her if she giggled.
"I'm sure it really is, Mac," she soothed, and the steward stepped back with another sniff to let her pass, then crossed to the table and placed the warming cover over her plate. Nimitz looked up at him and, when MacGuiness shrugged his ignorance, hopped down and pattered after his person.
Honor hit the acceptance key to clear the "WAIT" prompt, and a worried-looking Venizelos appeared on the screen.
"What is it, Andy?"
"RD Niner-Three just picked up a hyper footprint at extreme range, Ma'am, right on the fifty light-minute mark."
Honor felt the right side of her face turn as masklike as the left. A crack yawned in her serenity, but she schooled herself into calm. At that range, there was time.
"Details?"
"All we've got so far is the alert sequence. Troubadour's standing by to relay the rest of the transmission as it comes in, but—" He paused as someone said something Honor couldn't quite catch, then looked back at his captain. "Scratch that, Skipper. Commander McKeon says Niner-Two is coming in now, reporting a low-powered wedge moving across its range. Niner-Three has the same bogey and makes it right on the ecliptic. Looks like they're heading around the primary to sneak up on Grayson from behind."
Honor nodded while her mind raced. That kind of course meant it could only be the Masadans, but they knew Masada still had at least one other hyper-capable ship, so it wasn't necessarily the battlecruiser either. And with Fearless's gravitics down, she couldn't read the drones' FTL pulses direct, which meant she couldn't send Troubadour out to check without losing her real-time link to her main tactical sensors.
"All right, Andy. Alert Admiral Matthews and bring our own wedge up. Have Rafe and Stephen start a plot. Until we get mass readings from one of the drones, that's all we can do."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am."
"I'll be right up, and—" Honor paused as she felt a presence behind her. She turned to look over her shoulder, and James MacGuiness folded his arms. She met his eyes for a moment, then turned back to Venizelos. "I'll be right up as soon as I finish lunch," she corrected herself meekly, and despite his tension, the exec gri
"Yes, Ma'am. I understand."
"Thank you." Honor cut the circuit, stood, and marched straight back to the table under her steward's stern gaze.
Ensign Wolcott felt her own apprehension reflected from the people about her as she updated the rough plot. Commander Venizelos circulated between the control stations, yet Wolcott was more conscious of the Captain's absence than of the Exec's presence. She suspected she wasn't alone in that, either, for she'd seen more than one other glance being cast at the empty chair at the center of the bridge.
She finished and sat back, and a quiet voice spoke in her left ear.
"Don't sweat it, Ensign. If the shit were about to hit the fan, the Skipper wouldn't have taken time to finish lunch."
She turned her head and blushed as she met Lieutenant Cardones' knowing eyes.
"Was it that obvious, Sir?"
"Well, yes." Cardones smiled—gri
"Yes, Sir." Wolcott looked back down at the plot. They had tentative mass readings from three drones now, and CIC called it ninety-plus percent that the bogey was the Peep battlecruiser. It wasn't a comforting thought.