On Basilisk Station

Honor didn't mind. She looked down at the ribbon of the Manticore Cross, the Kingdom's second highest award for valor, gleaming blood-red against her space-black tunic. She had that to signify the Navy's and her Queen's opinion of her, just as she had her new ship, and she'd made list at last. Her feet were firmly on the ladder to flag rank, and no one—not Pavel Young, not the Republic of Haven, and not Countess Marisa or Sir Edward Janacek—could ever knock her off it again.

She sighed and raised a hand, pressing it to the plastic as if to bid Fearless farewell, then turned to leave, only to pause as someone called her name.

"Captain Harrington?"

She turned back to see a portly commodore puffing his way along the gallery towards her. She'd never seen him before, but he came to a halt before her and beamed, almost as if he intended to throw his arms about her.

"Yes, Sir?" she replied in a puzzled voice.

"Oh, excuse me. You wouldn't know. I'm Andrew Yerensky." He held out his hand, and Honor took it.

"Commodore Yerensky," she said, still wondering why he'd obviously sought her out.

"I wanted to talk to you about your action in Basilisk, Captain," Yerensky explained. "You see, I'm on the Weapons Development Board down at BuShips."

"Oh." Honor nodded. Now she understood; it was about time somebody finally took official notice of the stupidity of Fearless's armament alterations.

"Yes, indeed," Yerensky beamed. "I've read your combat report. Brilliant, Captain! Simply brilliant the way you sucked Sirius in and took her out! In fact, I'm hoping that you'd be willing to address a formal meeting of the board about your action and tactics next week. Admiral Hemphill's our chairman, you know, and she's placed consideration of the demonstrated effectiveness of the grav lance/energy torpedo weapons mix on the agenda."

Honor blinked. Admiral Hemphill? He couldn't possibly mean—!

"We were delighted by the outcome of your action, Captain," Yerensky burbled on. "It was a brilliant vindication of the new armament concept! Just think—your old, undersized little cruiser took on and defeated an eight-million-ton Q-ship with the armament of a battlecruiser! Why, when I think how impossible that would have been with one of the old, traditionally-armed cruisers, I can hardly—"

Honor stared at him in disbelief as he babbled on and on about "new thinking" and "proper weapon systems for modern warships" and "gave you the edge you really needed, didn't they?"—and something hot and primitive boiled deep within her. Her eyes hardened, and Nimitz hunkered down on her shoulder and bared his fangs while her fingers twitched with the physical urge to throttle the pompous twit. His "new thinking" had gotten over half her crew killed or wounded by forcing her to close straight up Sirius's wake, and it wasn't "proper weapons" which had saved what was left of Fearless —it had been Honor's people, their guts and blood and pain, and the definite partiality of Almighty God!

Her nostrils flared, but the commodore didn't even notice. He just went on and on, patting himself on the back so hard she expected him to sprain his shoulder, and the corner of her mouth began to twitch.

Talk to his board members? He wanted her to talk to his board members and tell them what a stroke of genius Fearless's refit had been?! She glared at him, sucking in breath to tell him exactly where he could put his invitation, but then a new thought struck her. She reared back to consider it, and the tick died. Her eyes began to twinkle instead of glare, and she fought back a sudden urge to giggle in his face as he slithered to a halt at last.

"Excuse me, Commodore," she heard herself say, "but let me be sure I've got this straight. You want me to address an official panel of the Weapons Development Board and give them my combat evaluation of Fearless's weapon systems?"

"Precisely, Captain!" Yerensky enthused. "Our more progressive members—the whole Navy, in fact—would be eternally in your debt. The personal testimony of an officer who's proven their efficacy in actual combat would have tremendous weight with the more reactionary, stick-in-the-mud board members, I'm sure, and God knows we need all the help we can get. Why, some of those die-hards actually refuse to admit it was your weapons—and skill, of course—which made your victory possible!"

"Shocking," Honor murmured. She cocked her head, and her glowing brown eyes danced while her firm lips blossomed into an immense smile. "Well, Commodore Yerensky, I don't see how I could possibly turn your request down. It happens that I do have very strong feelings about the new armament—" her smile grew even broader "—and I'd be delighted to share them with Admiral Hemphill and her colleagues."

APPENDIX

A Note on Time

As the rest of humanity, Manticorans use standard seconds, minutes, and hours, and Old Earth's 365.26-day year serves as the "Standard Reckoning Year," or "T-year," the common base to which local dates throughout known space are converted for convenience in interstellar trade and communication. Like most extra-Solar polities, the Star Kingdom of Manticore's history texts follow the convention of counting years "Post Diaspora" (i.e., in T-years from the year in which the first interstellar colony ship departed Old Earth) as well as in terms of the local calendar.

The Kingdom's official reckoning of dates is based on the rotational and orbital periods of Manticore-A III, the planet Manticore. This calendar is used for all official records, the calculation of individuals' ages, etc., but doesn't really work very well for the seasons of any planet other than Manticore itself. Accordingly, both Sphinx (Manticore-A IV) and Gryphon (Manticore-B IV) have their own, purely local calendars, which means that a single star system routinely uses no less than four calendars (including standard reckoning). Needless to say, dateconversion software is incorporated into virtually every Manticoran computer.

The Kingdom's planetary days and years are:

The clocks of each planet count time in full 60-minute standard hours with an additional, shorter "hour" called "compensate" (or, more commonly, simply "comp") to make up the difference. Thus, the planet Manticore's day consists of 22 standard hours hours plus a 27-minute-long comp, while Sphinx's day consists of 25 hours plus a 37-minute comp. Gryphon's day, like Manticore's, is 22 T-hours long, but with a comp of approximately 41.5 minutes.

The planetary week is seven planetary days long in each case, and Manticore's day is used aboard all Royal Navy vessels.

The official year of the Kingdom is 673 days long, with a leap year every third year. It is divided into 18 months, 11 of 37 days and 7 of 38, alternating for the first 6 and last 8 months, named (simply, if rather unimaginatively) First Month, Second Month, Third Month, etc. The Gryphon local year is also divided into 18 months (16 of 36 days and 2 of 37 days) with the extra days in Ninth and Tenth and one extra day in Eleventh Month every other local year. The Sphinxian year, however, is divided into 46 months, 35 of 39 days and 11 of 38 days (the shorter months fall in even-numbered months from Twelfth to Thirty-Second), with a leap year every 7 years. All of these calendars are reckoned in "Years After Landing" (abbreviated A.L.), dating from the day (March 21, 1416 P.D.) the first shuttle from the colony ship Jason touched down on the present-day site of the city of Landing. Obviously, this means that each planet's local year is a different "Year After Landing" from any of the others. Thus, Honor Harrington's orders to Fearless, dated Fourth 25, 280 A.L. (using Official Manticoran Reckoning, or the Manticore planetary calendar), were also written on March 3, 1900 P.D. (Standard Reckoning), and on Second 26, 93 A.L. (using the local Sphinxian calendar). This plethora of dates is a major reason Manticorans tend to convert time spans into T-years for comparison purposes.