At All Costs

The intercom buzzed again, and she shoved herself to her feet and stalked across to it.

"Mac," she said, with unaccustomed ire, "I thought I told you-"

"I'm sorry, Ma'am," MacGuiness interrupted. "I know you didn't want to be disturbed before supper. But there's someone here you should see."

"Mac," she said again, without her previous atypical heat, but wearily, "unless it's some sort of an emergency, I really don't want to see anyone. Can't Mercedes handle whatever it is?"

"I'm afraid not, Ma'am," MacGuiness replied. "He's come directly from Admiralty House specifically to speak to you."

"Oh."

Honor made her spine straighten and inhaled deeply. There'd been just enough time for her blistering comments on Mandel to reach Admiralty House and draw a response, and the fact that they'd sent someone out to deliver that response in person suggested that Admiral Givens and the Judge Advocate General might not have been too delighted by her actions.

Well, that's just too bad, she thought grimly. I'm a full admiral, a fleet commander, a duchess, and a steadholder. This investigation is too important to be sandbagged at the outset by someone too closed minded to even consider the blindingly obvious, and this time around, the Powers That Be are damned well going to pay attention to me!

The anger in her own thoughts surprised her, just a bit, and she wondered-not for the first time-how much of it stemmed from her own feeling of guilt. But that didn't really matter. Not when she knew she was right about whatever had been done to Timothy Mears.

"Very well, Mac," she said, after a moment, "give me two minutes, then send him in."

"Yes, Ma'am."

Honor keyed off the intercom, picked up her uniform tunic and slipped it back on, sealed it, and glanced into a bulkhead mirror. She shrugged their shoulders to settle the tunic perfectly in place, and ran her right hand lightly over her hair. That hair fell halfway to her waist when it was unbound, these days, but its tightly coiled braids hadn't slipped during her all too brief nap, and she nodded in approval. The slight tightness around her eyes might have told someone who knew her very well how weary she actually was, but there was no fault to find in her outward appearance.

She glanced at Nimitz, but the 'cat was draped over his sleeping perch, still sound asleep. She sensed him in the back of her mind, just as she knew he was always at least peripherally aware of her, even when his sleep was deepest, but she didn't wake him. He was as exhausted as she was, and he, too, was still dealing with his grief for two people who had been close personal friends.

Simon Mattingly's funeral had helped... some. There'd been at least a little catharsis in it, but at the same time it had only made her more aware of how far he'd come from his native world to die. She'd borrowed Brother Hendricks, the chaplain attached to one of the Grayson LAC groups assigned to Alice Truman's carrier squadron, to perform the ceremony. She'd known from agonizing personal experience that the Grayson tradition was that an armsman was buried where he fell, and Andrew LaFollet and Spencer Hawke had stood ramrod straight at her back throughout the brief military funeral ceremony. And then they, Alistair McKeon, Michelle Henke, and James MacGuiness had carried the Harrington Steading flag-draped coffin to the waiting airlock.

The two armsmen had stood rigidly at attention at her back once again as the airlock's i

"Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the endless sea of space, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life, through the Intercessor, our Lord Jesus Christ, at whose coming in glorious Majesty to judge the universe, it shall give up its dead, and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in Him shall be changed, and made like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty workings whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself. Amen."

Honor had reached out as he spoke, and at the final word, she'd pressed the button beside the hatch that expelled Simon Mattingly's coffin. The coffin's small reaction drive had activated as soon as it was clear of the ship, turning the coffin, aligning it perfectly with the distant fusion furnace of Trevor's Star, and she'd felt her own heart go with it.

Perhaps she'd be able, in time, to find the comfort in the ancient words of farewell. And certainly, if there'd ever been a man who had met the Test of his life, that man had been Simon Mattingly. But, oh, she missed him so.

She drew a deep breath, crossed to her desk, seated herself behind it, switched on her terminal, and pretended to be studying the document upon it, then waited.

Precisely one hundred and twenty seconds from the moment she'd given him the instruction, MacGuiness opened the cabin hatch.

"Your Grace," he said, "your visitor is here."

There was something peculiar about his voice, and something even odder about his emotions, and Honor looked up sharply.

"Hello, Honor," her visitor said, and she shot up out of her chair.

"Hamish!"

She never clearly remembered stepping around her desk. She just was, and then she walked straight into his arms.

She heard a thump behind her as Samantha vaulted from Hamish's shoulder and flowed across the carpet. She tasted Nimitz's awakening and sudden delight as his mate's mind-glow reached out to him, and then Hamish's arms were about her, and hers were about him.

"Hamish," she repeated more quietly, almost wonderingly, letting her head rest on his shoulder.

"'Salamander,' indeed." Hamish's deep voice was more than a little frayed around the edges, and his arms tightened. "Damn it, woman-can't you go anywhere without somebody trying to kill you?!"

"I'm sorry," she said, never opening her eyes as she tasted his very real worry. "I'm sorry, but no one could have seen this one coming."

"I know, I know," he sighed, and his embrace loosened at last.

He put his hands on her upper arms, holding her back at arm's length, and looked deeply into her eyes. He lacked her own empathic abilities, but once again, she tasted that echo of a treecat bonding between them, and she knew she could no more conceal her i

"Poor Honor," he said, after a moment. "Love, when we got the initial dispatches, Emily and I-" He broke off, shaking his head firmly. "Let's just say we didn't take it well. I wanted to come straight out here personally, but I was afraid of the attention I might have drawn. But then you fired Mandel, and I decided the hell with the attention I might attract. I know you, Honor. You wouldn't have brought the hammer down that hard on him unless he was a complete and utter idiot and you felt an overriding urgency to get someone competent to replace him, or unless you were really, really hurting. In either case, I needed to be here."

"I suppose it was a bit of each," she admitted, stepping back and linking her arm through his. She urged him across the cabin, and the two of them sat side by side on the couch, leaning comfortably against one another.

"I am hurting, badly," she said quietly. "Not just over Simon. Not even mostly over him, in some ways. Tim-"

She broke off, biting her lip, her vision misting, remembering how vehemently she had rejected Mercedes Brigham's suggestion that perhaps she should be thinking about filling the hole in her staff Mears death had left. But no admiral was required to have a flag lieutenant, and Honor refused to replace him. It might not be the most rational decision she'd ever made, but she had no intention of changing her mind.

"I'm hurting," she repeated. "And I will be, for a long time. But I honestly believe that it was mostly because he was such a square peg in a round hole."