Chapter THIRTY-SIX

Commander Usher was in a moderately foul mood. He'd been unhappy about his assignment from the beginning, and it had only gotten worse once Hawkwing and Artemis reached New Berlin.

He would have liked to blame Captain Fuchien, but the woman was exactly the sort of consummate professional one might expect to find commanding one of the Star Kingdoms crack liners. Captains for ships like that weren't picked out of a hat, and Fuchien knew all the moves to stroke irritated and irascible naval officers detailed to escort her ship. No one could have been more courteous, and she'd made it clear she intended to defer to his judgment, despite his younger age and junior rank, in the event anything untoward happened. Both of which only made Ushers foul mood fouler, since they prevented him from taking his ire out on her.

The problem, he thought as he walked to his command chair, was that he also couldn't take his ire out on the person who deserved it. The notion that Klaus and Stacey Hauptman were sufficiently important to drag a Queen's ship away from her proper duties had grated on his nerves from the start. Worse, the fiction that Hawkwing had just "happened" to be heading for Silesia when the Admiralty realized Artemis was bound there had worn transparently thin in the Sligo System.

Like every wartime passenger ticket, the tickets of Artemis' current passengers specifically included the proviso that her captain, at her discretion, could make such changes in scheduling en route to their ticketed destinations as she deemed appropriate. That proviso was intended to allow a skipper to protect his vessel by avoiding danger spots without fear of legal action from an irate passenger, but that wasn't what it was being used for this time.

Klaus Hauptman had decided he needed three extra days with his primary Andermani factor in Sligo. It was typical of the man's arrogance that he'd directed Fuchien to hold the ship there while he dealt with his business affairs. Usher doubted he'd even considered the extent to which it might inconvenience others, though he had gone out of his way to provide free shuttle service to and from the planet Erin's renowned ski resorts. That "generosity" might have defused the frustration of Artemis' passengers, but it hadn't done a thing for Gene Usher's. Nor had it helped him maintain the appearance that his ship was only coincidentally dogging Artemis' coattails. Sligo was the Empire's second most populous system, and there'd been plenty of IAN vessels around to look after the liner while she was there. Which meant Usher could have proceeded on his way with a clear conscience... if he'd actually been ordered to a duty station in Silesia. Unfortunately, his real mission was to escort Artemis, which meant he couldn't leave until she did, which, in turn, meant he'd had to spend the same three days in Erin orbit with her.

Wasting his time that way would have been bad enough, but Hauptman was no fool. Watching Hawkwing sit there in parking orbit had confirmed what he'd undoubtedly suspected from the outset, and he'd decided to take advantage of it when they reached New Berlin. He hadn't extended their layover there; instead, he'd found something worse to do.

There were three Hauptman Line freighters in New Berlin when Artemis and Hawkwing arrived, all waiting to join the next scheduled convoy. But ships didn't earn any money sitting still. Despite their huge size, interstellar freighters were cheaper to operate on a ton-for-ton cargo basis than most forms of purely planetary transport. A single freighter could easily stow four or five million tons of cargo, and counter-grav and impellers made it easy enough to lift freight out of a gravity well to make even interstellar transport of foodstuffs a paying proposition. But she also cost her owners almost as much to operate sitting in a parking orbit as she did earning revenue between stars, and no shipowner liked to see his vessels waiting around.

Of course, given ship losses in Silesia, only an idiot wanted them to proceed independently when they didn't have to, either. Swinging around a planet while they waited for the next convoy might shrink profit margins, but not as much as losing the entire ship would. Unfortunately, Hauptman had seen no reason not to make use of the destroyer which "just happened" to be going his way, and he'd instructed his freighters to join Artemis for the trip to Sachsen.

Which, Usher reflected, reminding himself not to gnash his teeth audibly, was no more than he should have expected from the old bastard. Left to their own devices, Hawkwing and Artemis could easily have translated clear up to the zeta bands and maintained a steady .7 c, for an apparent velocity of well over twenty-five hundred times light-speed, completing the passage from New Berlin to Sachsen in three T-weeks, or fifteen days subjective. Lumbered by Hauptman's freighters, however, they were limited to the delta bands and a maximum speed of only .5 c... which meant the same trip would take almost forty-eight T-days and that dilation would shave only five days subjective off that wearisome total.

That three-fold extension of the passage was bad enough, but what absolutely infuriated Usher was knowing Hauptman had manipulated a Queen's ship, Usher's ship.

The old bastard must just love this, Usher thought moodily, watching his repeater plot. Hawkwing held station on the port quarter of the improvised convoy, where she would be best placed to intercept any threat, as it trekked steadily down its current grav wave. Artemis was the third ship in the column, with the freighter Markham following directly astern of her, and it all looked maddeningly complacent. He's feuded with the Admiralty over one thing or another for decades, the commander told himself, and he's lost more often than he's won. Now he's sitting in his stateroom gloating over the way he's "forced" the Fleet to increase its escort efforts just this once. And the cast-iron bitch of it is, he's never even had to say a single word about it. He didn't ask, didn't plead, didn't bluster. He simply abused the discretionary clause of the standard ticket form, and I can't even protest, because I'm not officially escorting him at all!

He glowered at the repeater for a few more moments, and then his expression changed. His glower turned into a wicked grin, and he punched a code into his com.

"Exec," Lieutenant Commander Alicia Marcos' voice responded almost instantly, and Usher tipped his chair back to turn his wicked smile up at the deckhead.

"Sorry to disturb you when you're off watch, Alicia, but I've just had a thought."

"A thought, Skipper?" Marcos had served with him long enough to recognize that tone, and her own was suddenly wary.

"Yes, indeed," Usher said, fairly beaming at the deck-head. "Since we've got all this, ah, unanticipated time on our hands, don't you think we should put it to best use?"

"In what way, Captain?" Marcos inquired even more warily.

"I'm glad you asked that," Usher said expansively. "Why don't you and Ed come on up to my briefing room so we can discuss it?"

"Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!" Margaret Fuchien’s head jerked up so suddenly her second cup of coffee sloshed over her second-best uniform trousers. The brown tide was scorching hot, but she hardly noticed as she vaulted out of her chair at the head of the breakfast table and ran for the lift.

"Captain to the bridge!" the urgent voice repeated, and she swore as she skidded into the lift, for her standing orders were crystal clear. Unless it was a true emergency, and a time-critical one, at that, the passengers were not to be panicked by broadcast messages, and there'd been plenty of stewards available to murmur discreetly in her ear.

She hit the emergency override to slam the lift doors shut and whirled to the intercom pad.

"Captain to th..."

"This is the Captain! Shut down that goddamned message!" she snarled, and the recorded voice died in midword. "Better! Now what the hell is so damned urgent?"

"We're under attack, Ma'am!" her second officer replied with an edge of panic.

"Under at...?" Fuchien stared at the com panel, then shook herself. "By who and how many?" she demanded.

"We don't know yet." Lieutenant Donevski sounded marginally calmer, and she pictured him inhaling deeply and getting a grip on himself. "All we know is Hawkwing broadcast an attack alert, ordered us onto a new heading, and then peeled off to starboard."

"Damn." Fuchien’s mind raced. It would have been nice of Usher to tell her what the problem was! Artemis did have the missile armament of a heavy cruiser, after all, and the trained personnel to use it. Those missiles would have been a hell of a lot more useful if Fuchien had some idea of the parameters of the threat.

But Usher was Navy, and the law was clear. In any case of attack, the decisions of the senior Navy officer present took absolute precedence.

"Come to the heading ordered. I'll be on the bridge in two minutes."

"Aye, Ma'am!"

Fuchien released the "send" button, stood back with a sour expression, and tried to tell herself she wasn't afraid.

The lift slid to a halt almost precisely two minutes later, and Fuchien stormed onto her bridge. The relief on Donevski's face was painfully obvious, and she waved him off as she strode briskly across to the plot.

Artemis' bridge was a peculiar hybrid. Civilian vessels required fewer watch officers, yet civilian bridges were usually larger than those aboard warships, where internal space was always at a premium. That normally made a merchant ships bridge seem almost ostentatiously spacious to a naval officer, but Artemis' command deck was more crowded than most. A naval-style tactical plot, manned by Lieutenant Annabelle Ward and her tactical crews, was placed right beside it.

Fuchien came to a halt at Ward's shoulder and glared at the plot. All she could see were the freighters and her own ship, all accelerating at their best speed, close to two thousand gravities, thanks to the grav wave, at right angles to their previous heading. Hawkwing was also visible, on an exactly reciprocal heading at over fifty-two hundred gravities. The range between them was opening at over fifty-one KPS

"What the hell is she going after?" Fuchien wondered aloud.

"Damned if I know, Skipper," Ward replied in a strong Sphinx accent. "She just took the hell off like a wet treecat and ordered us to run for it. I can't see a damned thing on that bearing."

Fuchien studied the blandly uninformative plot for another handful of seconds, then spared a single fulminating glance at the visual display. Particle densities were higher than normal, even for h-space, along this particular wave, and the glorious frozen lightning of hyper-space was more beautiful than usual. But that same beauty also cut her sensor range considerably, and Margaret Fuchien didn't like the thought of what might be headed her way from just over her sensor horizon. But, damn it to hell, what could be out there? Her sensors were as good as Hawkwing's, so how could anything she couldn't see have picked them up?

"Anything further from Hawkwing?" she demanded, turning to Donevski.

"No, Ma'am."

"Play back the original message," she directed. Donevski nodded to the com officer, and five seconds later, Commander Usher's voice crackled over the bridge speakers.

"All ships, this is Hawkwing! Condition Red! Come to two-seven-zero immediately, maximum convoy acceleration! Maintain heading until further notice! Hawkwing out!"

"That's all?" Fuchien demanded incredulously.

"Yes, Ma'am," Donevski said. "We copied his message, but before we could respond he took off like a bat out of hell, and Anna caught his sidewalls and fire control coming up."

Fuchien turned to crook an eyebrow at Lieutenant Ward, who nodded.

"I don't know what Ushers picked up, Skipper, but he's not fooling around with it," the tactical officer said. "His combat systems came on-line in less than twelve seconds from the moment he started transmitting, and he was on his new heading before he finished talking."

Fuchien nodded and turned her attention back to Ward's plot. The destroyer was a full thirty light-seconds astern now, with a relative velocity of over thirty thousand KPS, and she was already deploying missile decoys. That was an ominous sign, and Fuchien swallowed a sudden lump of fear. Why was Usher doing that? Missiles were useless in a grav wave, and no one could possibly be in the energy range without showing up on Artemis' scanners!

"Why deploy decoys so soon?" she asked Ward tautly.

"I don't know, Skipper." The tac officer had herself well under control, but an edge of uncertainty burned in her crisp reply.

"Could somebody be out there under stealth?"

"Possible, but if they're already in missile range, we should have a sniff of them on gravitics by now however good their systems are." Ward tapped a sequence of commands into her console, then sat back with an unhappy sound and shook her head. "Nothing, Skipper. I don't see a single damned thing out there for..."

Her voice chopped off abruptly as Usher threw Hawkwing into a violent turn to port. The destroyer screamed around, and even as she turned, every laser mount in her starboard broadside went to continuous, concentrated fire. Deadly energy sleeted over whatever she was shooting at, and Ward paled. What in Gods name was out there to draw that kind of fire? And where the hell was it?!

"Skipper, Mr. Hauptman's on the com," Donevski announced. Fuchien started to snarl a command not to bother her, but then she drew a deep breath and gestured sharply.

"Yes, Mr. Hauptman?" She couldn't quite keep her anger at his timing out of her voice. "I'm just a bit busy up here right now, Sir!"

"What's happening, Captain?" Hauptman demanded.

"We appear to be under attack, Sir," Fuchien said as calmly as she could.

"Under attack? By what?!"

"I don't have an answer to that question just yet, Sir. But whatever it is, Hawkwing's engaging it now, so it must be close."

"My God." The quiet words were squeezed out of the magnate almost against his will, and he closed his eyes at the far end of the com link. "Keep me informed, please," he said, and signed off. Which, Fuchien reflected, showed more common sense than she'd expected from him.

"What the hell is she shooting at?" Ward fumed. "I still can't see a damned thing!"

"I don't know," Fuchien said quietly, "but whatever it is, it's..."

Hawkwing's lasers maintained their deadly, converging fire, slashing at something no one on Artemis' bridge could even see. There was absolutely nothing there according to their sensors, yet the destroyer threw continuous fire at whatever it was for five full minutes.

And then, suddenly, she ceased fire, turned another ninety degrees to port, and came loping after the merchantmen.

Fuchien stared at the plot in total confusion, then turned to meet Wards gaze. The tac officer looked just as confused as Fuchien was and raised her hands in baffled ignorance.

"Beats the hell out of me, Skipper. Never saw anything like it in my life."

"Burst transmission from Hawkwing, Captain," the com officer announced.

"On speaker," Fuchien said tautly.

"All ships resume original heading," Gene Ushers voice said pleasantly. "Thank you for your cooperation and excellent response time, but this concludes our unscheduled exercise."

Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

Honor leaned back on the couch in her day cabin with her legs curled comfortably under her and a book viewer in her lap. Her right hand held a long-stemmed glass of her prized Delacourt, an open box of chocolates sat beside her, and she smiled as she pressed the page advance with her left forefinger.

Like the wine, the novel in her lap was a gift from her father. She hadn't had much time to read over the past arduous months, and she'd decided to save it for a special treat, a reward to herself, which she would know she'd earned when she actually had time to read it anyway.

It was a very, very old book, and despite the way printed and audio recordings had frozen the language, its pre-space English was hard to follow, especially when characters used period slang. It had also been written using the old English system of measurement. Math had never been Honor’s strong suit, and all she knew about English measurement was that a "yard" was a little shorter than a meter and that a "mile" was a little less than two kilometers. She had no idea how many grams there were in a "pound," which was of considerable importance for this particular novel, and the situation was complicated by the fact that "pounds" (and also "guineas" and "shillings") seemed to be monetary units, as well. She remembered pounds (and "francs") from her study of the Napoleonic Wars, but her texts had converted most monetary amounts into present-day dollars, which left her only a vague notion of how much a pound had been worth, and she'd never heard of "guineas" or "shillings" in her life. It was all very confusing, though she was fairly confident she was catching most of it from context, and she considered, again, querying her desk computer for English measurement equivalents and a table of pre-space currencies.

For the moment, however, she was entirely content to sit exactly where she was. Not only was her fathers gift proving an extraordinarily good read in spite of its archaisms, but she was also aware of a rare and complete sense of satisfaction. Wayfarer might not be a ship of the wall, but she'd cut quite a swath, and after the better part of six months, her crew had come together as well as any Honor had ever seen. The newbies had their feet under them, the best of the experienced hands had been given time to pass along their own skills, the bad apples were in the brig, reformed, or keeping a very low profile, and department efficiency ratings were closing in on a uniform 4.0. She felt certain the rest of TG 1037 was doing equally well, though it would be nice to have confirmation when they checked in at Sachsen on their way back from New Berlin, and, best of all, she was back in Manticoran uniform. And, she thought, turning another page, what we've accomplished so far should go a long way to completing my "rehabilitation."

Even the fact that she'd ever needed "rehabilitating" no longer had the power to disturb her, and, she admitted, she actually preferred Wayfarer to the battle squadron she'd commanded in Grayson service. She'd been born to be a captain, she thought wistfully, commander of a starship, mistress after God and all alone on her own responsibility. It was, without a doubt, the loneliest job in the universe, but it was also the proper task, the proper challenge, for her... and one she would have to give up all too soon.

She thought about that last point fairly often. She was a captain of the list with almost nine years' seniority. Even if the Opposition managed to block any Admiralty plans to promote her out of the zone, time in grade would make her a commodore within another four or five years, probably less; wars gave ample opportunity to step into a dead man's shoes. And from what Earl White Haven had said on Grayson, she'd probably be dropped into an acting commodore's slot much sooner.

When that happened, her days as a captain would be over. A part of her looked forward to it as she always looked forward to the next challenge, with anticipation and an eagerness to be about it, and for once she didn't feel the nagging uncertainty that this time she might not be equal to the task. She'd proven she could command a squadron of the wall, or, for that matter, an entire heavy task force, in Yeltsin. More than that, she knew she'd done it well. Her abilities as a strategist had not yet been tested, but she knew she could hack the tactical side of it.

But for all the satisfaction that brought her, and for all her awareness that without flag rank she could never play a role on the larger stage of actually shaping the war's direction, she hated the thought of giving up the white beret of a starship's commander. She knew she'd been lucky to command as many ships as she had, and to have had two of them straight from the builders as a keel plate owner, but she also knew she would always hunger for just one more.

She smiled wryly and sipped more wine, wondering why the thought didn't hurt more than it did. Why it was a thing of bittersweet regret mingled with pleasure rather than total unhappiness. Maybe I'm just a bit more ambitious than l'd like to admit?

Her smile grew, and she glanced at the gently snoring ball of treecat on the couch beside her. Nimitz, at least, had no second thoughts at all. He understood her love for starship command, but he was also smugly confident of her ability to handle any task which came her way... and not at all shy about making it clear he thought she deserved to command the Queens entire Navy.

Well, that was for the future, which had a pronounced gift for taking care of itself in its own good time, however much humans dithered in the process. Meanwhile, she had an excellent glass of wine and a novel which was thoroughly enjoyable. This Forester guy writes a darned good book!

She'd just turned another page when the admittance chime sounded softly. She started to set her novel aside, but MacGuiness padded into the compartment, and she settled back as he crossed to her desk and pressed the com key.

"Yes?" he said.

"The Chief Engineer to see the Steadholder," Eddy Howard announced, and MacGuiness glanced at his captain with a raised eyebrow.

"Harry?" Honor glanced at the chrono. It was late in Wayfarer's day, and she wondered why Tschu hadn't simply screened her. But he probably had his reasons, and she nodded to MacGuiness, who punched the hatch button. Tschu stepped into the compartment with Samantha on his shoulder. The female 'cat looked unbearably smug, Honor blinked, wondering why that particular adjective had occurred to her, and Nimitz gave a soft snort and roused instantly. He sat up, then stretched with a long lazy yawn that stopped abruptly. He cocked his head, gazing very intently at Samantha, and Honor blinked again as she felt a deep, complex stir of emotion from him. She couldn't sort it all out, but the strongest component of it could only be described as delight.

"Sorry to disturb you, Skipper," Tschu said wryly, "but there's something you should know."

"There is?" Honor laid her novel aside as Samantha hopped down from the engineers shoulder. The 'cat scampered across the deck to jump up on the couch beside Nimitz, and the two of them sat so close together their bodies touched. As Honor watched in bemusement, Nimitz curled his prehensile tail around the smaller 'cat in an oddly protective gesture and rubbed his cheek against the top of her head with a deep, softly buzzing purr.

"Yes, Ma'am," Tschu said with that same wry smile. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to put in for maternity leave."

Honor blinked a third time, and then her eyes narrowed.

"Yes, Ma'am," the engineer said again. "I'm afraid Sam is pregnant."

Honor sat up very straight, jaw dropping, then whipped around to stare at the 'cats. Nimitz looked back with an absurdly complacent, and proud, expression, and his sense of delight soared. He held her gaze for several seconds, and then she shook her head with a slow smile of her own. Nimitz? A father? Somehow she'd never really believed that could happen, despite all the time he'd spent with Samantha. She'd considered the possibility intellectually, but it had been just the two of them for so long, aside from her brief, happy months with Paul Tankersley, that her emotions had assumed it would always be just the two of them.

"Well," she said finally, "this is a surprise, Harry. I assume you're certain about it?"

"Sam is," Tschu half-chuckled, "and that's good enough for me. 'Cats don't often make mistakes about things like that."

"No, no, they don't." Honor glanced at MacGuiness, whose surprise seemed just as great as hers but who also stood there with a huge smile on his face. "I think we need another glass, Mac," she told him dryly. "In fact, make it two glasses, you're about to become an uncle. And, under the circumstances, a few stalks of celery probably aren't out of order, either."

"Yes, Ma'am!" MacGuiness gave her another smile, then hurried out of the cabin, and she returned her attention to Tschu.

"This is going to leave me with a bit of a problem. I'm going to need a darned good replacement for you, Harry. You've done an outstanding job."

"I'm sorry, Skipper. I hate to run out on you, but..." The engineer shrugged, and Honor nodded. It probably hadn't happened more than twice before in the entire history of the Royal Navy, but the precedents were clear. The Admiralty didn't like them much, but seven of the last nine Manticoran monarchs, including the present Queen Elizabeth, had been adopted by treecats, and they'd been very firm with the Navy. 'Cats were people; they would be treated as any other people in the company of a Queen's ship, and that meant pregnant females were barred from shipboard duty or anyplace else where they might encounter a radiation hazard. Nor would they be separated from their adopted humans, even if that did make problems for BuPers, which meant Harold Tschu was entirely serious about requesting "maternity leave." He and Samantha would have to be returned to Sphinx by the earliest available transport, and he'd probably be stuck there for at least three years. It would be that long before Samantha's (and Nimitz's) offspring, of which there would probably be at least three, were old enough for her to foster with another female 'cat.

Which brought up another point, and Honor turned to look at the two 'cats on her couch.

"You two do realize what this means, don't you?" she asked gently. Nimitz cocked his head at her while Samantha leaned her cheek against his shoulder. "The regs are the same for you as they are for us two-foots," Honor told him. "We're going to have to send Sam back to Sphinx as soon as we can so she and her babies will be safe."

Nimitz made a soft sound and tucked a strong, wiry arm around Samantha. He looked down at her, and their eyes met and held. Once again, Honor felt that deep, subtle flow of communication, and their unhappiness at the prospect of separation. They truly were mated, she thought, wondering where that was going to end, and the idea of being parted caused both of them pain. But even if they hadn't had to be separated for this, Honor thought, sooner or later she and Tschu were certain to be assigned to different ships. Had Nimitz and Samantha even considered that?

Then Nimitz turned his eyes back to her. They were grave and dark, without their usual mischievousness, and she knew the answer. They had considered it. And, like any Navy personnel who chose to wed, they'd accepted that they would be parted both often and for extended periods. Honor knew how the prospect felt, for she'd faced it before Paul's death, and she could tell they didn't like it any more than she had. But neither of them could any more have ended their relationships with their adopted people just to be together than they could have renounced their feelings for one another, and that was simply the way it was...

Honor felt their unhappiness, and their love, not just for one another, but for her and Harold Tschu, like an extension of her own psyche, and it hit her hard. There was so much joy with the sorrow, such intense pleasure at the thought of the children to come and such regret that Nimitz would not be there when they were born, that she felt tears in her own eyes. She bunked them away and reached out, running her hand over both of them, then looked up at Tschu.

He lacked her own link to Nimitz, but the emotions being generated in Honor's cabin were too intense for him not to feel them, and she saw them echoed in his face.