Honor Harrington (№5) - Flag In Exile

There was a limit to the amount of self-criticism he was willing to put up with in his person, and the look in his green eyes told Honor she'd just reached it. What with political decisions, religious crises, and ten thousand administrative details, there'd been no way she could have made time for anything else. She and Nimitz both knew that, and she felt her lips quirk as the cat's stern injunction to stop fretting flowed into her.

Nimitz, she thought, might not be the best, or most impartial, judge of naval officers, but this time he was probably right. The entire First Battle Squadron was still in the process of formation. She'd have time to familiarize herself with the hardware, and it wasn't as if there'd be a lot of preexisting SOP for her to fall over, since any operating procedures would be hers to create. As for personnel, she was confident High Admiral Matthews had picked a strong team for her, though the one person she'd specifically requested had been unavailable. She'd wanted Mark Brentworth as her flag captain, but he'd just been "frocked" to commodore and given GNS Raoul Courvosier and the First Battlecruiser Squadron.

She could still have had him, and part of her wished she'd insisted, but there was no way she was going to pull him from that command. Besides, it wasn't as if the Brentworth clan would be unrepresented in BatRon One. Mark's father, Rear Admiral Walter Brentworth, commanded its First Division, and no one could have deserved it more.

She was glad to know she'd have him, but aside from Mark and a handful of very senior officers, like his father or High Admiral Matthews himself, Honor didn't know anyone in the GSN well enough to have an opinion of them, and she'd had no desire to pick names for a squadron command team at random. Better to rely on the judgment of someone who did know them. It was entirely possible she and that someone else might differ on the qualities they found ideal in an officer, but some basis for evaluation was better than none, and she could always make changes later if she had to.

The pad ramp locked in place, and she lifted Nimitz to her right shoulder. Despite Matthews' undoubtedly correct reading of the strategic situation, Yeltsin's Star was almost two light-centuries behind the front, and it would take far more audacity than the Peeps had yet demonstrated to try any sort of operation that far in the Alliance's rear. No, unless the situation changed radically, the probability of anything major happening here was negligible, which was just as well, since the entire Grayson Navy would be basically one huge training command while it figured out what to do with its new wall of battle. If there were any problems, she told herself firmly, there'd be plenty of time to sort things out.

Nimitz made a soft sound and rubbed his head against the top of her preposterous cap. She felt his relief at the more positive trend of her thoughts and reached up to scratch his chin, then headed for the lounge door, MacGuiness and her armsmen at her heels.

The pinnace hatch was open, and Honor felt an eyebrow rise as two uniformed figures stepped out onto the ramp. She hadn't requested an escort, nor had anyone mentioned that there'd be one. Even if she had asked for one, she would have expected a junior officer, but the golden reflections flashing from their cap visors told her both those people were at least full commanders, and just to make matters more interesting, one was obviously a woman. There were few female officers, and no native-born ones, in Grayson service, so the woman on the ramp must be one of those the GSN had recruited from the Star Kingdom, and Honor wondered if they'd ever met. She brought up the telescopic function on her prosthetic eye, but the angle was bad; the woman was more than half-concealed behind her male companion and impossible to make out, so Honor flicked her curious glance to the man, and, for the first time in her life, literally stumbled over her own feet.

LaFollet's darting hand caught her elbow as she fought for balance, and Nimitz chittered in surprise as the bolt of shocked recognition exploded through her. She managed to stay upright and even keep walking almost normally, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the man beside her pinnace's hatch. It couldn't be! What in the name of all that was holy was he doing here?!

"My Lady?" LaFollet's low voice was sharp with concern, and Honor shook her head like a boxer throwing off a left jab.

"Nothing, Andrew." She reached across to pat the hand on her elbow with absent reassurance, then looked deliberately away from the hatch as they neared the ramp steps. "Just a sudden thought."

LaFollet murmured something, yet she knew she hadn't fooled him, especially when he turned his own gaze towards the waiting officers and frowned in speculation. But at least he knew when she wanted him to drop something, and he said nothing as she led the way up the steps and the slender man at their top saluted her.

"Good morning, Lady Harrington," he said, with an accent which had never come from Grayson. He looked far more natural in the uniform of a GSN captain than Honor felt in that of an admiral, and his deep voice was steady, but wariness flickered in his eyes. Her own emotions were in too much turmoil for her to reach out through Nimitz and sample his, but she refused to show it. She hid her shock behind the calm mask of thirty years of naval service as she returned his salute, then extended her hand to him.

"Good morning, Captain Yu," she replied. His handclasp was firm, and something that wasn't quite a smile flitted across his lips as she cocked her head.

"I thought it would be a good idea to come dirt-side to meet you, My Lady," he said, answering the unspoken question. "I'm your new flag captain."

"Are you?" Honor was surprised she sounded so unsurprised.

"Yes, My Lady." Yu's dark, steady eyes met hers for another moment, then he released her hand and waved to the sturdy, blue-uniformed junior-grade captain beside him. "And this, My Lady, is your chief of staff. I believe you've met," he said, and Honor's eyes widened again, this time in delight.

"Mercedes!" She stepped quickly forward and caught the captain's hand in both of her own. "I had no idea you were in Grayson service!"

"I guess I'm just the bad penny, Milady," Mercedes Brigham replied. "On the other hand, lieutenant commander to captain jay-gee in one fell swoop is nothing to sneer at for an old lady who figured she'd retire a lieutenant."

"I suppose not," Honor agreed, and released Brigham's hand to gesture at the rings on her own cuffs. "And speaking of unexpected promotions...!" '

"They look good on you, Milady," Brigham said quietly. "I heard about all the crap back home, but it's good to see you back where you belong."

"Thank you," Honor said, equally quietly, then shook herself and turned back to her new flag captain. "Well, Captain Yu, it seems we've all come up in the world since last we met, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does, My Lady." Yu's reply acknowledged the slight barb in her tone with neither irony nor apology, and he stood back from the hatch. The Manticoran tradition was that the senior officer was last to board and first to exit from any small craft, but in Grayson service she both boarded and disembarked first, and Yu beckoned politely for Honor to precede him. "My officers and your staff await your pleasure aboard Terrible, My Lady," he said.

"Then let's not keep them waiting, Captain," she replied.

The two captains fell in at her heels, followed by James MacGuiness and Honor's armsmen. It was a ridiculously large entourage, she thought, but the reflection was sheer reflex, no more than a deliberate attempt to divert herself from the shock of learning who High Admiral Matthews had selected as her flag captain. She settled into the comfortable seat at the head of the compartment and lifted Nimitz back down into her lap, then turned her head to gaze out the view port as Yu sat beside her. LaFollet took his proper place directly behind her, but Mercedes Brigham politely but deliberately blocked anyone else out of the three rows of seats behind the major. Nimitz gazed speculatively at Brigham, but MacGuiness and the rest of Honors armsmen took the hint and filled the after end of the cabin.

Honor glanced up, and Brigham gave her a small smile, then followed the others aft, leaving Honor, LaFollet, and Yu in the small island of privacy she'd created. Honor watched her go, then turned to give her flag captain a steady, measuring look.

Alfredo Yu was the last person she would have expected to see commanding a Grayson ship of the wall. She understood the GSN's desperate need for experienced officers, but it was unusual, to say the least, for a navy to hand one of its most powerful units to a man who less than four years before had done his best to conquer its home world for its mortal enemies.

Of course, Operation Jericho hadn't been Yu's idea. He'd simply been following his orders as an officer of the People's Navy, and if the religious fanatics who'd run Masada had let him do it without interference he would have conquered Grayson for them. There was no doubt in Honor's mind on that point, for Alfredo Yu was a dangerously competent man, and he'd had a modern, eight-hundred-and-fifty-kiloton battlecruiser to do it with.

But the Masadans hadn't let Yu use his ship properly. They'd had their chance, Honor had given it to them herself, when she pulled all but one unit of her own squadron out of Yeltsin, but they'd rejected his advice on how to proceed before she returned. And when she had returned and wrecked their own plans, he'd refused to let them use his command to brush her ships aside and bombard Grayson in one last, hopeless bid to force its surrender before a Manticoran relief force could arrive. But they'd refused to take no for an answer. Instead, they'd slipped enough men aboard his ship to seize control, put their own officers in command of her, and pressed on in a do-or-die effort.

Honor wished they'd listened to Yu and abandoned operations, but if they'd insisted on attacking, she was profoundly grateful they'd done it without him. Thunder of God had battered her heavy cruiser into a wreck in Masadan hands; what she would have done under Yu's command scarcely bore thinking on.

Unfortunately for Captain Yu, the PRH had been an unforgiving master even before Pierre and his lunatics took over. He'd known what would happen if he returned home after letting his Masadan "allies" seize his ship, especially when that ship and two-thirds of its crew had subsequently been lost in action. The fact that he'd managed, against near-impossible odds, to get a third of his crew off before her final action would have cut no ice with a naval staff determined to put the blame on something, or someone, other than its own plans. So Yu had requested political asylum in Manticore, and Honor's last responsibility in Yeltsin had been to take him aboard her ship for the trip home.

She'd been prepared to feel contempt for a man who abandoned his birth nation, but she hadn't. The People's Republic wasn't the sort of nation that engendered loyalty, and Yu was better than Haven had deserved. She'd studied his record in some detail following the trip, and she still wondered how someone with his cool, independent intelligence had ever made captain in the PN. The man was a thinker, not a blind fighter, exactly the sort of officer whose independence of thought made a bureaucracy like Haven's uncomfortable, and his loss had hurt the People's Republic badly. Not only had it cost the PN one or its most competent commanders, but he'd been a priceless treasure for the Office of Naval Intelligence, as well. In fact, she'd assumed he was still tucked away in the Star Kingdom where ONI and the Admiralty would have immediate access to his in-depth knowledge of the People's Navy.

But he wasn't, and she chewed her lower lip and wondered if she was glad. A man like Alfredo Yu could be invaluable to her, if he could be trusted... and if she could forget how many reasons she had to hate him.

She sighed, and Nimitz made a soft, uncomfortable sound and shifted in her lap as she rebuked herself for that last thought. It wasn't Yu's fault he'd been ordered to help Masada conquer Grayson, and he'd done his duty just as she hoped she would have done hers. Intellectually, she could accept that; emotionally, she wondered if she could ever truly forgive him for planning and executing the ambush which had killed Admiral Raoul Courvosier and blown HMS Madrigal out of space.

A hot, familiar pain prickled behind her eyes, and she knew part of her hatred for Yu sprang from her conviction that her actions had led directly to Courvosier's death. Neither she nor the Admiral had been given any reason to suspect the imminence of a Havenite operation against Grayson. ONI hadn't had a clue, and neither had Grayson intelligence. Her decision to pull most of her squadron out of Yeltsin, leaving only Madrigal to support him, had made sense in the context of the diplomatic situation, and no one had known there was any other context to consider. There was no reason she should blame herself for what had happened... but she did, and she always would, for Raoul Courvosier had been more than simply her senior officer. He'd been the mentor who'd taken a shy, socially awkward midshipman with a glaring weakness in math and turned her into a Queen's officer. Along the way, he'd imbued that officer with his own standards of professionalism and responsibility, and she'd never fully realized until he died how much she'd loved, as well as respected, him. And Alfredo Yu had killed him. She shivered inside with the memory of her sick hate for Yu when he'd first come aboard her ship. She'd made herself show him the courtesy his rank was due, even in exile, but it had been hard. Hard. And he'd sensed her hatred, if not all the reasons for it. The voyage to Manticore had been strained for them both, and Honor had never in her wildest dreams expected to serve in the same navy with him, and certainly not to find him commanding her first superdreadnought flagship!

Yu returned her gaze levelly, almost as if he shared Nimitz's ability to read her emotions. Turbines whined as the pinnace rose on its counter-grav, but a pocket of silence hovered between them, and then Yu sighed, clasped his hands loosely in his lap, and cleared his throat.

"Lady Harrington, I didn't realize until yesterday that no one had told you I'd been given command of Terrible," he said. "I apologize for the oversight, if that's what it really was, and also for not screening you in person to inform you. I did consider coming you, but ..." He paused and inhaled. "But I chickened out," he admitted. "I knew when we first met that Admiral Courvosier had been killed in Yeltsin." Her eyes hardened, but he met them unflinchingly and continued in a voice which was tinged with genuine regret yet refused to apologize for doing his duty, "But I didn't know, then, how close to the Admiral you'd been, My Lady. When I found out, I realized how difficult it must have been for you to have me as a passenger in your ship. More than that, I can appreciate now that you might not want me aboard Terrible." He drew another breath and squared his shoulders. "If you'd care to request my relief, Admiral," he said quietly, "I'm certain High Admiral Matthews can find you a suitable replacement."

Honor gazed at him in masklike silence, but she felt her own surprise at his offer. He had to know how tempted she'd be to replace him, just as he knew she could, whatever he might want. Yet rather than try to avoid the issue or finesse his way around it, he'd brought it out into the open and all but offered to go if that was what she wanted. He was a man who'd lost everything, one who'd somehow overcome almost unimaginable odds to find his way into a starship command once more, but his eyes were steady, and the quiet sincerity behind them flowed to her through Nimitz.

It would be so easy to do it, she thought. To have him replaced rather than deal with her own ambiguous emotions. And there was another factor. As her flag captain, Yu would be her tactical deputy, the individual charged with executing her orders and maneuvers. If by some chance her squadron was called to action, he'd be positioned to do incalculable harm if some fragment of loyalty to the People's Republic still lived deep inside him, and could even he know with certainty whether or not one did? If it came time to fire on the ships of his birth nation, possibly on officers and men he'd helped train, could he do it? More to the point, could she take the risk that he couldn't?

"I was surprised to see you, Captain," she said, sparring for time as thought and counter-thought warred in her mind. "I assumed you were still assigned to ONI back in the Star Kingdom."

"No, My Lady. Your Admiralty, ah, loaned me to Grayson two years ago at High Admiral Matthews' request. The Office of Shipbuilding wanted to pick my brains about Havenite design and tactical doctrine before it wrote the specifications for Grayson's first locally built ships of the wall."

"I see. And now?" Honor made a small gesture at the blue-on-blue uniforms they both wore, and Yu smiled faintly.

"And now I'm an officer of the GSN, My Lady, and a Grayson citizen."

"You are?" Honor couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice, and Yu gave another thin smile.

"I'd never met a Grayson before Operation Jericho, Lady Harrington. When I did meet some of them, I was... impressed. I suppose I'd assumed one religious fanatic was very like another, that there was nothing to choose between Masada and Grayson, but I was wrong. Wrong to think Graysons were fanatics, and wrong to equate them with Masadans."

"So you just moved out here? Just like that?"

"Hardly just like 'that,' My Lady," Yu said wryly. "I know I'm still paying my dues. They need people with my qualifications, but there were, and are, people out here who haven't forgiven me for Jericho." He shrugged. "I can accept that. In fact, the thing that amazed me was how many of them were willing to if not forgive at least accept that there'd never been anything personal in it. That I was simply following my orders."

He looked straight into her eyes with the last sentence, and Honor nodded, acknowledging the implications.

"But I also found, My Lady, that I like Graysons. They can be the most stubborn, infuriating people I've ever met, but I can't quite imagine anyone who wasn't those things accomplishing as much as they have so quickly. Lady Harrington, I couldn't go 'home' to the People's Republic if I wanted to. I didn't, and don't want to, but even if I did, the People's Republic I served doesn't exist anymore. I accepted that I could never go home when I requested asylum from Manticore; what's happened since only makes that more true. I suppose I could even tell myself that taking service with Grayson against Pierre's people is an act of loyalty to the old regime, but, frankly, what happens to the Republic isn't very important to me anymore."

"No? Then what is important, Captain?"

"Following my own conscience, My Lady," Yu said quietly. "That's not something the People's Navy ever gave its officers much opportunity to do. I knew it at the time, but it never occurred to me that anything else was possible. It was simply the way it was... until, suddenly, I wasn't in the PN anymore. I don't know if a Manticoran can truly understand just how big a shock to my system that was. And then I was sent back here, given a chance to get to know the people I almost helped Masada conquer, and..."

He paused, then gave a tiny shrug. "I don't suppose I'll ever be a 'real' Grayson in their eyes, not the way you are, but I'm not a Peep anymore, either, and this is my home now. I came back here originally because Manticore told me to and, perhaps, because I saw it as a sort of apology. Now that I'm here, I want to help defend it, and I imagine..." he smiled again, this time with an edge of true humor "...that one reason High Admiral Matthews made me your flag captain was to have someone he trusted and who had the experience to evaluate my performance fully ride herd on me. I'm a valuable resource, but it would be a bit much to expect him to forget my first visit to Yeltsin."

"I see." Honor leaned back, brow furrowed in thought, conscious of Andrew LaFollet's silent presence behind her and tasting Yu's sincerity through Nimitz. She wanted to turn in her chair and look back at Mercedes Brigham, to see what she thought of Alfredo Yu, for Mercedes had her own reasons to feel both gratitude and hate for him. She'd been HMS Madrigal's executive officer. It was her ship and her people Yu's ambush had killed, but it was also Yu who'd demanded the Masadans recover Madrigal's survivors. And, Honor thought grimly, it was Yu who'd turned those survivors over to the Masadans.

He couldn't have known what would happen. The man who'd insisted that the rules of war be followed would never have handed helpless prisoners over to people he expected to murder them. But that didn't change the fact that of all Madrigal's captured female personnel, only Mercedes Brigham and Ensign Mai-ling Jackson had lived through the ghastly gang rapes and brutal beatings of their captivity, and Mercedes had been three-quarters dead when Honor's Marines pulled her out of the ruins of Blackbird Base. If it was difficult for Honor to decide how she felt about having Yu under her command, how much harder must it be for Mercedes to serve with him? Especially here, where so many things waited to remind her of the hell she'd endured?

Honor shivered as the thought sent a stab of pain through her. She had trouble enough facing her own wounds; how in the name of God did someone like Mercedes deal with her nightmares? And what right did Honor have to put her in the position of serving on a daily basis with the man who'd been responsible, however unknowingly, for the stuff those nightmares were made of?

She closed her eyes, and her hands stroked gently, caressingly, down Nimitz’s spine. Every instinct screamed for her to accept Yu's offer and replace him, but her professional judgment insisted just as stubbornly that he was too valuable, too potentially useful to her, to be discarded. She bit the inside of her lip as uncertainty washed about within her like acid, or like proof she'd been right to doubt her own wounded strength.

She closed her eyes tighter and fought to empty her mind of confusion, to summon the detached logic with which Admiral Courvosier had trained her to approach command decisions. And then, almost against her will, Mercedes Brigham’s face flashed before her, and she saw once more the small smile Mercedes had given her as she blocked everyone else from the seats behind Honor and Captain Yu. Blocked them, Honor realized, because she'd known what Yu intended to say... and given him the space and privacy in which to say it.

The memory of Mercedes' smile stilled the roiling currents of her own emotions. It didn't answer her questions, but somehow it made them only questions, not a quagmire of warring instincts that threatened to suck her under, and she opened her eyes to look Yu in the face.

"I appreciate the difficulties of your position, Captain," she said at last, one hand stroking up Nimitz's spine to caress his ears, "and also how difficult it must have been for you to say what you just have. I respect your forth-rightness, and I'm grateful for it, but you're right. There have to be some reservations in my mind, and you know it as well as I do. On the other hand," she managed a small smile, "you, Captain Brigham, and I are all newcomers to Grayson, and each of us is here for our own reasons. Maybe it's time we start fresh from that common..."

She paused, head cocked, chocolate-dark eyes intent, then shrugged.

"I'll bear your offer in mind, Captain Yu, and I'll think about it. One thing I do know is that you represent far too valuable a resource to be simply thrown away. You deserve equal forthrightness from me, so let me admit that any problems we might have working as a team would arise from personal considerations, not reservations as to your competence. I'd like to think I'm professional enough to put the past behind us and deal solely with the present, but I'm only human. You know as well as I do how important it is for an admiral and her flag captain to have total faith in one another, and, as you say, I didn't even know you'd been given Terrible, which means this has all come at me mighty fast. Let me think about it. I'll try not to leave you hanging, but I need to turn it over in my mind. The one thing I promise you is that if I don't ask for your replacement, it will be because you have my complete confidence, not simply in your skill, but in your integrity."

"Thank you, My Lady," Yu said quietly. "Both for your honesty, and for your understanding." A tone sounded and a proximity light flashed on the forward bulkhead as the pinnace approached its destination, and he shook himself. "And in the meantime, Lady Harrington," he said, with an almost natural smile of his own, "if you'd care to glance out the view port, I'd be honored to give you your first close look at your new flagship."

CHAPTER TEN

GNS Terrible floated alone in her parking orbit, a double-ended hammerhead of dazzling white, her flanks punctuated with three geometrically precise rows of dots. At first, she looked like some exquisitely detailed model scaled to a child's hand, but the pinnace swept on towards her, closing at an angle to permit Honor a clear view, and her new flagship swelled quickly as the range dropped. Terrible seemed to grow rather than come nearer, expanding first from a toy into a ship, and then into the true leviathan she was as the pinnace came close enough to become its own reference point.

From dots, her weapon bays became hatches vast enough to dock the pinnace with ease. Phased radar arrays, point defense laser clusters, and the sharp blades of gravitic sensors swelled into sharp definition, and her drive nodes, four times the pinnace's size, stood out boldly. She was enormous, eight million tons of star-ship, over four kilometers long and with a maximum beam of six hundred meters, jeweled with the green and white lights of a moored starship, and Honor stared raptly out the view port as the pinnace spiraled along the superdreadnought’s length to show her every detail.

Terrible had none of the grace of Honors last command. HMS Nike had been a battlecruiser, sleek and arrogant with carefully blended speed and firepower. Terrible wasn't sleek. She was a ponderous mountain of white, built not to raid and run, not to pursue lighter units to destruction or use her own speed to evade more powerful foes, but for the crushing violence of the wall of battle. She was designed to absorb damage that would reduce any less mighty craft to splinters and remain in action, and no mere battlecruiser could live within the reach of her energy batteries.

She wasn't the first SD Honor had served upon, but her power dwarfed any ship she'd ever commanded... and there were six such vessels in BatRon One. The thought sent a cold shiver down Honor's spine, yet that shiver went almost unnoticed in the intensify of her study. Her trained eye picked out differences between Terrible and her Manticoran-built counterparts, the more numerous, closer-spaced tubes of her missile armament, arranged on a single deck rather than intermixed with her energy weapons; the numbers of small craft docking points that supplemented her boat bays; the arrangement of her running lights, and the depths of her mind flickered with first impressions. Terrible's missile armament would give her a heavy throw weight, but she had less magazine space for a sustained engagement than a Manticoran SD. The tubes' tight arrangement made a single hit more likely to take out multiple launchers, as well, Honor mused, then nodded to herself. Peep walls had always seemed overly loose to her, but now she understood. With that missile layout and their poorer point defense, they'd have to maintain separation so ships could roll to interpose their impeller wedges against incoming laser heads or see their own missile batteries blown away from outside energy range, and...

Her thoughts broke off as the pinnace killed its wedge and went to auxiliary thrusters. It swept in below the ship on final approach, and she felt the gentle shudder as the boat bay tractors locked on. The thrusters died, and the pinnace floated up into a vast, brightly lit cavern and settled into the docking buffers. Mechanical mooring arms locked, and Captain Yu stood as the docking tube and umbilicals extended themselves. He stepped back, clearing the way for LaFollet to take his proper position at his Steadholder's shoulder, while the pinnace's flight engineer checked the hatch telltales. A green light announced a good seal and pressure, and the engineer cracked the hatch.

Yu said nothing. He simply stood there, hands clasped behind him, and waited while Honor climbed out of her own seat. She settled Nimitz on her shoulder once more, adjusted her cap, and walked slowly to the hatch while the other passengers got themselves into formation to disembark. Then she drew a deep and (she hoped) unobtrusive breath, reached for the green-hued grab bar, and swung herself into the tube's zero-gee.

A shouted command sounded as Honor swam the last few meters of the tube and caught another grab bar to swing herself over the interface into Terrible's onboard grav field, and she braced herself as the golden notes of a bugle washed over her.