Echoes Of Honor

"All right, thirty degrees," he said, trying to sound as light as she did. "But only in the fall and winter."

"You’re hopeless, Alistair." Honor shook her head with another of those crooked half-smiles. McKeon was too self-disciplined to let his emotions show, but she and Nimitz had felt his sudden spike of fury, and she knew exactly what had caused it. But talking about it wouldn’t change anything, and so she only looked at Caslet.

"And how has your day been, Warner?"

"Hot and humid," Caslet replied with a smile. He glanced at McKeon, then held out a hand. "Let me have your canteen, Alistair. Dame Honor obviously wants to talk to you, so I’ll take myself off and refill yours and mine both before we head back out."

"Thanks, that’s probably a good idea," McKeon said, and unhooked the canteen from the left side of his belt, where it had counterbalanced the pulser. He tossed it underhand to Caslet, who caught it, sketched a jaunty half-salute, and moved off towards the grounded shuttles.

Honor turned her head to watch him go, then looked back up at McKeon.

"He’s a good man," she said quietly, with no particular emphasis, and he exhaled noisily and nodded.

"Yes. Yes, he is," he replied.

It didn’t sound particularly like an apology, but Honor didn’t need Nimitz’s empathic abilities to know it was one. In fact, Caslet and McKeon had become good friends during their time aboard Tepes and after their escape, but there was still that unavoidable edge of tension. Whatever else Warner Caslet might be, he was—technically, at least—still an officer of the People’s Navy. Honor liked him a great deal, and she trusted him, yet that invisible line of separation still existed. And Caslet knew it as well as she did. In fact, he was the one who had quietly suggested to her that it would probably be a good idea if no one offered to issue him a pulser or a pulse rifle, and his departure to refill his and McKeon’s canteens was typical of his habit of tactfully defusing potential awkwardnesses. But she still didn’t know exactly what they were going to do with him. He’d been driven into opposition to State Security because of the way StateSec had treated her and the others captured with her, yet she knew him too well to believe he could turn his back on the People’s Republic easily. He hated and despised the PRH’s current government, but like her, he took his oath as an officer seriously, and the time was going to come when he had to make some difficult decisions. Or, more accurately, some more difficult decisions, for his very presence here was the result of some he had already made.

And also the only reason he’s still alive, she reminded herself. He would’ve died with everyone else when Harkness blew up Tepes if Alistair hadn’t brought him along. And even if the ship hadn’t blown, leaving him behind wouldn’t have done him any favors. Ransom would never have believed he hadn’t helped with the escape, and when she got done with him—

Honor shivered at her own thoughts, then pulled free of them and nodded for McKeon to sit on the log beside her.

He ran his hands over his dark hair, stripping away sweat, and obeyed the implied command. There was very little breeze under the thick, green ceiling of the jungle, but he was careful to take advantage of what there was and stay upwind from the cloud of drifting treecat down, and Honor chuckled.

"Fritz brought me a fresh water bottle about ten minutes ago," she said, her good eye fixed on Nimitz as she worked with the comb. "It’s in the rucksack there. Help yourself."

"Thanks," McKeon said gratefully. "Warner and I finished ours off an hour ago." He reached into the rucksack, and his eyes widened as something gurgled and rattled. He brought the water bottle out quickly, shook it beside his ear, and pursed his lips in delight. "Hey, ice! You didn’t mention that part!"

"Rank hath its privileges, Commodore McKeon," Honor replied airily. "Go ahead."

McKeon needed no third invitation, and he twisted the cap off the insulated water bottle and raised it to his lips. His head went back and he drank deeply, eyes closed in sensual ecstasy as the icy liquid flowed down his throat. Because it was intended for Honor, it was laced with protein builders and concentrated nutrients in addition to the electrolytes and other goodies Dr. Montoya insisted on adding to everyone else’s drinking water. They gave an odd, slightly unpleasant edge to its taste, but the sheer decadence of its coldness brushed such minor considerations aside.

"Oh, my! " He lowered the water bottle at last, eyes still closed, savoring the coolness clinging to his mouth, then sighed and capped the bottle. "I’d almost forgotten what cold water tastes like," he said, putting it back into the rucksack. "Thanks, Skipper."

"Don’t get too carried away over it," Honor said, shaking her head with just an edge of embarrassment, and he smiled and nodded. A part of her resented the way that Montoya insisted on "pampering" her. She tried to disguise her discomfort with a light ma

Not that "tidbit" was actually a word she would normally consider applying to Peep emergency rations. Prior to her arrival on Hell, she’d thought nothing could possibly taste worse than RMN e-rats.

Well, you learn something new everyday, I suppose, she thought, then changed the subject.

"Anything new from the patrols?" she asked, and McKeon shrugged.

"Not really. Warner and I brought back those specimens Fritz wanted, but I don’t think they’re going to work out any better than the others. And Jasper and Anson ran into another of those bear-bobcat thingamies that was just as ill-tempered as the other two we’ve met." He made a disgusted sound. "It’s a damned shame the local beasties don’t know they can’t digest us. Maybe they’d leave us alone if they did."

"Maybe not, too," Honor replied, stroking the comb up and down against her thigh to clear a clot of Nimitz fur from its teeth. "There are quite a few things people—or treecats—can’t digest very well, or even at all, that they still love the taste of. For all you know your bearcat might be perfectly happy to spend the afternoon munching on you. It might even consider you a low-calorie snack!"

"It can consider me anything it likes," McKeon told her, "but if it gets close enough to me to be rude, I’m go

"Not very friendly, but probably prudent," she conceded. "At least the things are smaller than hexapumas or peak bears."

"True." McKeon turned on the log and glanced over his shoulder at their encampment. Each of their two hijacked Peep assault shuttles was sixty-three meters in length, with a maximum wingspan of forty-three meters and a minimum span of over nineteen even with the wings in full oversweep for parking efficiency. Fervently as every member of their group might curse the hot, wet, rot-ridden, voracious jungle, hiding something the size of those two craft would have been an impossible challenge in most other kinds of terrain. As it was, the individual trees which supported the uppermost layer of the overhead canopy were just far enough apart that the pilots had been able to nudge their way between the thick trunks without actually knocking them over. And once the shuttles were down, the cammo netting which had been part of their standard supplies, coupled with the jungle’s vines, lianas, fronds, leaves, branches, and tree trunks had made concealing them a straightforward task. The sheer grunt labor involved in spreading the nets with only seventeen sets of hands and just four portable grav lifters available for the job had been daunting, but the alternative had been a great motivator. They’d all had more than enough of the Office of State Security’s hospitality.