CHAPTER TEN

Ensign Wolcott nibbled a fingernail and considered the officers at the next table. Lieutenant (JG) Tremaine had come aboard Fearless as Commander McKeon's pilot—now he sat chatting with Lieutenant Cardones and Lieutenant Commander Venizelos, and Wolcott envied his ease with such exalted personages.

Of course, Tremaine had been with the Captain in Basilisk, too. Both the Captain and the Exec were careful about never letting that color their official relations with anyone, but everyone knew there was an inner circle.

The problem was that Wolcott needed to talk to someone from inside that circle—and not Venizelos or Cardones. They were both approachable to their juniors, but she was afraid of how the Exec might react if he thought she was criticizing the Captain. And Cardones' reaction would probably be even worse . . . not to mention the fact that anyone who wore the Order of Gallantry and the blood-red sleeve stripe of the Monarch's Thanks was more than a little daunting to anyone fresh from Saganami Island, even if she was his junior tactical officer. But Lieutenant Tremaine was young enough—and junior enough—to feel less threatening. He knew the Captain, too, and he was assigned to a different ship, so if she made a fool of herself, or pissed him off, she wouldn't have to see him every day.

She nibbled her finger harder, nursing her coffee, then sighed in relief as Venizelos and Cardones rose.

Cardones said something to Tremaine and they all laughed. Then the exec and tactical officer disappeared into the officers' mess lift, and the ensign picked up her coffeecup, stiffened her nerve, and crossed to Tremaine's table as casually as she could.

He was just starting to tidy his tray when she cleared her throat. He looked up with a smile—a very nice smile—and Wolcott suddenly found herself wondering if perhaps there weren't other reasons to make his acquaintance. After all, he was assigned to Troubadour, so the prohibitions against involvements with people in the same chain of command wouldn't apply. . . .

She felt herself blush at her thoughts, especially in light of what she wanted to talk to him about, and gave herself an internal shake.

"Excuse me, Sir," she said. "I wonder if I might have a moment of your time?"

"Of course, Ms.—?" He cocked his eyebrows, and she sat at his gesture.

"Wolcott, Sir. Carolyn Wolcott, Class of '81."

"Ah. First deployment?" he asked pleasantly.

"Yes, Sir."

"What can I do for you, Ms. Wolcott?"

"Well, it's just-" She swallowed. This was going to be just as hard as she'd expected, despite his charm, and she drew a deep breath. "Sir, you were with Captain Harrington in Basilisk, and I, well, I needed to discuss something with someone who knows her."

"Oh?" Mobile eyebrows swooped downward, and his tone was suddenly cool.

"Yes, Sir," she hurried on desperately. "It's just that, well, something happened in—in Yeltsin, and I don't know if I should . . ." She swallowed again, but something softened in his eyes.

"Had a run in with the Graysons, did you?" His voice was much gentler, and her face flamed. "Well, why didn't you take it to Commander Venizelos, then?" he asked reasonably.

"I-" She wiggled in her chair, feeling younger—and more awkward—than in years. "I didn't know how he might react—or the Captain. I mean, the awful way they treated her, and she never said a word to them. . . . She might have thought I was being silly or . . . or something," she finished lamely.

"I doubt that." Tremaine poured fresh coffee for himself and poised the pot interrogatively above Wolcott's cup. She nodded gratefully, and he poured, then sat back nursing his cup. "Why do I have the feeling it's the 'or something' that worries you, Ms. Wolcott?"

Her face flamed still darker, and she stared down into her coffee.

"Sir, I don't know the Captain the way . . . the way you do."

"The way I do?" Tremaine smiled wryly. "Ms. Wolcott, I was an ensign myself the last time I served under Captain Harrington—and that wasn't all that long ago. I'd hardly claim to 'know' her especially well. I respect her, and I admire her tremendously, but I don't know her."

"But you were in Basilisk with her."

"So were several hundred other people, and I was as wet behind the ears as they come. If you want someone who really knows her," Tremaine added, frowning as he ran through a mental list of Fearless's officers, "your best bet is probably Rafe Cardones."

"I couldn't ask him!" Wolcott gasped, and Tremaine laughed out loud.

"Ms. Wolcott, Lieutenant Cardones was a JG then himself, and just between you, me, and the bulkhead, he was all thumbs, too. Of course, he got over that—thanks to the skipper." He smiled at her, then sobered. "On the other hand, you've gotten yourself in deep enough now. You may as well go ahead and ask me whatever it is you don't want to ask Rafe or Commander Venizelos." She twisted her cup, and he grinned. "Go ahead—trot it out! Everyone expects an ensign to put a foot in his or her mouth sometime, you know."

"Well, it's just— Sir, is the Captain running away from Grayson?"

The question came out in a rush, and her heart plummeted as Tremaine's face went absolutely expressionless.

"Perhaps you'd care to explain that question, Ensign." His voice was very, very cold.

"Sir, it's just that . . . Commander Venizelos sent me down to Grayson to drop off Admiral Courvosier's baggage," she said miserably. She hadn't meant for it to come out that way, and she knew she'd been stupid to ask anyone a question which might be taken as a criticism of her CO. "I was supposed to meet someone from the Embassy, but there was this . . . Grayson officer." Her face burned again, but this time it was with humiliated memory. "He told me I couldn't land there—it was the pad I'd been cleared for, Sir, but he told me I couldn't land there. That . . . that I didn't have any business pretending to be an officer and I should . . . go home and play with my dolls, Sir."

"And you didn't tell the Exec?" Tremaine's cold, ominous tone was not, she was relieved to realize, directed at her this time.

"No, Sir," she said in a tiny voice.

"What else did he have to say?" the Lieutenant demanded.

"He-" Wolcott drew a deep breath. "I'd rather not say, Sir. But I showed him my clearance and orders, and he just laughed. He said they didn't matter. They were only from the Captain, not a real officer, and he called her-" She stopped and her hands clenched on her coffee cup. "Then he said it was about time we 'bitches' got out of Yeltsin, and he-" she looked away from the table and bit her lip "—he tried to put his hand inside my tunic, Sir."

"He what?!"

Tremaine half stood, and heads turned all over the dining room. Wolcott darted an agonized look around, and he sat back down, staring at her. She made herself nod, and his eyes narrowed.

"Why didn't you report him?" His voice was lower but still harsh. "You know the Captain's orders about things like that!"

"But . . ." Wolcott hesitated, then met his eyes. "Sir, we were pulling out, and the Grayson—he seemed to think it was because the Captain was . . . running away from how badly they've treated her. I didn't know whether he was right or not, Sir," she said almost desperately, "and even if he wasn't, we were scheduled to break orbit in an hour. Nothing like that ever happened to me before, Sir. If I'd been at home, I would've— But out here I didn't know what to do, and if—if I told the Captain what he'd said about her—!"

She broke off, biting her lip harder, and Tremaine inhaled deeply.

"All right, Ms. Wolcott. I understand. But here's what you're going to do. As soon as the Exec comes off watch, you're going to tell him exactly what happened, word-for-word to the best of your memory, but you are not going to tell him you ever even considered that the Captain might be 'running away.' "

Her eyes were confused—and unhappy—and he touched her arm gently.

"Listen to me. I don't think Captain Harrington knows how to run away. Oh, sure, she's making a tactical withdrawal right now, but not because the Graysons ran her off, whatever they may think. If you even suggest to Commander Venizelos that you thought that might be what was happening, he'll probably hand you your head."

"That's what I was afraid of," she admitted. "But I just didn't know. And . . . and if they were right, I didn't want to make things even worse for her, and the things he said about her were so terrible, I just didn't-"

"Ms. Wolcott," Tremaine said gently, "the one thing the Skipper will never do is blame you for someone else's actions, and she feels very strongly about harassment. I think it has to do with-" He stopped and shook his head. "Never mind. Tell the Exec, and if he asks why you waited so long, tell him you figured we were leaving so soon they couldn't have done anything about it till we got back anyway. That's true enough, isn't it?"

She nodded, and he patted her arm.

"Good. I promise you'll get support, not a reaming." He leaned back again, then smiled. "Actually, I think what you really need is someone to ask for advice when you don't want to stick your neck out with one of the officers, so finish your coffee. I've got someone I want you to meet."

"Who's that, Sir?" Wolcott asked curiously.

"Well, he's not exactly someone your folks would want me to introduce you to," Tremaine said with a wry smile, "but he certainly straightened me out on my first cruise." Wolcott drained her cup, and the lieutenant rose. "I think you'll like Chief Harkness," he told her. "And-" his eyes glinted wickedly "—if anyone aboard Fearless knows a way to deal with scumbags like that Grayson without involving anyone else, he will!"

Commander Alistair McKeon watched Nimitz work his way through yet another rabbit quarter. For some reason known only to God, the terrestrial rabbit had adapted amazingly well to the planet Sphinx. Sphinx's year was over five T-years long, which, coupled with the local gravity and a fourteen-degree axial tilt, produced some . . . impressive flora and fauna and a climate most off-worlders loved during spring and fall—well, early fall, anyway—and detested at all other times. Under the circumstances, one might have expected something as inherently stupid as a rabbit to perish miserably; instead, they'd thrived. Probably, McKeon reflected, thanks to their birthrate.

Nimitz removed flesh from a bone with surgeon-like precision, laid it neatly on his plate, and picked up another in his delicate-looking true-hands, and McKeon grinned. Rabbits might thrive on Sphinx, but they hadn't gotten noticeably brighter and, just as humans could eat most Sphinxian animal life, Sphinx's predators could eat bunnies. And did—with gusto.

"He really likes rabbit, doesn't he?" McKeon observed, and Honor smiled.

"Not all 'cats do, but Nimitz certainly does. It's not like celery-every 'cat loves that—but Nimitz is an epicure. He likes variety, and 'cats are arboreals, so he never had a chance to taste rabbit until he adopted me." She chuckled. "You should have seen him the first time I offered him some."

"What happened? Did our cultured friend's table manners desert him?"

"He didn't have any table manners at the time, and he practically wallowed in his plate."

Nimitz looked up from his rabbit, and it was McKeon's turn to chuckle at his disdainful expression. Few treecats ever left Sphinx, and off-worlders persistently underestimated those who did, but McKeon had known Nimitz long enough to learn better. 'Cats out-pointed Old Earth's dolphins on the sentience scale, and the commander sometimes suspected they were even more intelligent than they chose to let people know.

Nimitz held Honor's gaze a moment, then sniffed and returned to his meal.

"Take that, Captain Harrington," McKeon murmured, and grinned at Honor's laugh, for he hadn't heard many from her in Yeltsin. Of course, he was her junior CO, and unlike too many RMN officers, who saw patronage and family interest as a natural part of a military career, she detested even the appearance of favoritism, so there'd been no invitations to private dinners since he'd joined her command. In fact, she'd invited Commander Truman to join them tonight, but Truman had planned an unscheduled drill for her crew's surprise evening entertainment.

McKeon was as glad she had. He liked Alice Truman, but however much Honor's other skippers might respect her, he knew damned well none of them would push her on any subject she didn't open herself. He also knew, from personal experience, that she would never dream of sharing her own pain with any of her own ship's company—and that she was less impervious to strain and self-doubt than she believed she ought to be.

He finished his peach cobbler and leaned back with a sigh of content as MacGuiness poured fresh coffee into his cup.

"Thank you, Mac," he said, then grimaced as the chief steward filled Honor's mug with cocoa.

"I don't see how you can drink that stuff," he complained as MacGuiness retired. "Especially not after something as sweet and sticky as dessert!"

"Fair enough," Honor replied, sipping with a grin. "I've never understood how any of you can swill up coffee. Yecch!" She shuddered. "It smells nice, but I wouldn't use it for a lubricant."

"It's not as bad as all that," McKeon protested.

"All I can say is that it must be an acquired taste I, for one, have no interest in acquiring."

"At least it's not gooey and sticky."

"Which, aside from its smell, is probably its only virtue." Honor's dark eyes danced. "It certainly wouldn't keep you alive through a Sphinx winter. That takes a real hot drink!"

"I'm not too sure I'd be interested in surviving a Sphinx winter."

"That's because you're an effete Manticoran. You call what you get there weather?" She sniffed. "You're all so spoiled you think a measly meter or so of snow is a blizzard!"

"Oh? I don't see you moving to Gryphon."

"The fact that I like weather doesn't make me a masochist."

"I don't imagine Commander DuMorne would appreciate that implied aspersion on his home world's climate," McKeon grinned.

"I doubt Steve's been back to visit Gryphon more than twice since the Academy, and if you think what I have to say about Gryphon weather is bad, you should hear him. Saganami Island made a true believer out of him, and he resettled his entire family around Jason Bay years ago."

"I see." McKeon toyed with his coffee cup a moment, then looked up with an expression that was half smile and half frown. "Speaking of true believers, what do you think of Grayson?"

Some of the humor vanished from Honor's eyes. She took another sip of cocoa, as if to buy time, but McKeon waited patiently. He'd been trying to work the conversation around to Grayson all evening, and he wasn't going to let her off the hook now. He might be her junior officer, but he was also her friend.

"I try not to think about them," she said finally, her tone a tacit acceptance of his persistence. "They're provincial, narrow, and bigoted, and if the Admiral hadn't let me get away from them, I would've started breaking heads."

"Not the most diplomatic method of communication, Ma'am," McKeon murmured, and her lips twitched in an unwilling smile.

"I wasn't feeling particularly diplomatic. And, frankly, I wasn't all that concerned with communicating with them, either."

"Then you were wrong," McKeon said very quietly. Her mouth tightened with a stubbornness he knew well, but he continued in that same quiet voice. "Once upon a time, you had a real jerk of an exec who let his feelings get in the way of his duty." He watched her eyes flicker as his words struck home. "Don't let anything push you into doing the same thing, Honor."

Silence hovered between them, and Nimitz thumped down from his chair to hop up into Honor's lap. He stood on his rearmost limbs, planting the other four firmly on the table, and looked back and forth between them.

"You've been headed for this all evening, haven't you?" she asked finally.

"More or less. You could have flushed my career down the toilet—Lord knows you had reason to—and I don't want to see you making mistakes for the same reason I did."

"Mistakes?" There was an edge to her voice, but he nodded.

"Mistakes." He waved a hand over the table. "I know you'd never let Admiral Courvosier down like I let you down, but some day you're going to have to learn to handle people in a diplomatic context. This isn't Basilisk Station, and we're not talking about enforcing the commerce regulations or running down smugglers. We're talking about interacting with the officers of a sovereign star system with a radically different culture, and the rules are different."

"I seem to recall that you also objected to my decision to enforce the com regs," Honor half-snapped, and McKeon winced. He started to reply, but her hand rose before he opened his mouth. "I shouldn't have said that—and I know you're trying to help. But I'm just not cut out to be a diplomat, Alistair. Not if that means putting up with people like the Graysons!"

"You don't have a lot of choice," McKeon said as gently as he could. "You're Admiral Courvosier's ranking military officer. Whether you like the Graysons or detest them—and whether they like you or not—you can't change that, and this treaty is as important to the Kingdom as any naval engagement. You're not just Honor Harrington to these people. You're a Queen's officer, the senior Queen's officer in their system, and-"

"And you think I was wrong to leave," Honor interrupted.

"Yes, I do." McKeon met her eyes unflinchingly. "I realize that, as a man, my contacts with their officers must have been a lot less stressful than yours, and some of them are genuine bastards, potential allies or no. But some of the ones who aren't let their guard down with me a time or two. They were curious—more than curious—and what they really wanted to know was how I could stomach having a woman as my commanding officer." He shrugged. "They knew better than to come right out and ask, but the question was there."

"How did you answer it?"

"I didn't, in so many words, but I expect I said what Jason Alvarez or any of our other male personnel would've said—that we don't worry about people's plumbing, only how well they do their jobs, and that you do yours better than anyone else I know."

Honor blushed, but McKeon continued without a trace of sycophancy.

"That shook them up, but some of them went away to think about it. So what concerns me now is that the ones who did have to know there was no real need for Fearless to convoy these freighters to Casca—not when you could've sent Apollo and Troubadour. For the real idiots, that may not make any difference, but what about the ones who aren't total assholes? They're going to figure the real reason was to get you and Commander Truman 'out of sight, out of mind,' and it doesn't matter whether it was your idea or the Admiral's. Except . . . if it was your idea, they're going to wonder why you wanted out. Because you felt your presence was hampering the negotiations? Or because you're a woman and, whatever we said, you couldn't take the pressure?"

"You mean they'll think I cut and ran," Honor said flatly.

"I mean they may."

"No, you mean they will." She leaned back and studied his face. "Do you think that, Alistair?"

"No. Or maybe I do, a little. Not because you were scared of a fight, but because you didn't want to face this one. Because this time you didn't know how to fight back, maybe."

"Maybe I did cut and run." She turned her cocoa mug on its saucer, and Nimitz nuzzled her elbow. "But it seemed to me—still seems to me—that I was only getting in the Admiral's way, and-" She paused, then sighed. "Damn it, Alistair, I don't know how to fight it!"

McKeon grimaced at the oath, mild as it was, for he'd never before heard her swear, not even when their ship was being blown apart around them.

"Then you'll just have to figure out how." She looked back up at him, and he shrugged. "I know—easy for me to say. After all, I've got gonads. But they're still going to be there when we get back from Casca, and you're going to have to deal with them then. You're going to have to, whatever the Admiral may have achieved in our absence, and not just for yourself. You're our senior officer. What you do and say—what you let them do or say to you—reflects on the Queen's honor, not just yours, and there are other women serving under your command. Even if there weren't, more women are going to follow you in Yeltsin sooner or later, and the pattern you establish is the one they'll have to deal with, too. You know that."

"Yes." Honor gathered Nimitz up and hugged him to her breasts. "But what do I do, Alistair? How do I convince them to treat me as a Queen's officer when all they see is a woman who shouldn't be an officer?"

"Hey, I'm just a commander!" McKeon said, and grinned at her fleeting smile. "On the other hand, maybe you just put your finger on the mistake you've been making ever since Admiral Yanakov's staff crapped their shorts when they realized you were SO. You're talking about what they see, not what you see or what you are."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you've been playing by their rules, not yours."

"Didn't you just tell me I needed to be diplomatic?"

"No, I said you had to understand diplomacy. There's a difference. If you really did pull out of Yeltsin because of the way they reacted to you, then you let their prejudices put you in a box. You let them run you out of town when you should have spit in their eye and dared them to prove there was some reason you shouldn't be an officer."

"You mean I took the easy way out."

"I guess I do, and that's probably why you feel like you ran. There are two sides to every dialogue, but if you accept the other side's terms without demanding equal time for your own, then they control the debate and its outcome."

"Um." Honor buried her nose in Nimitz's fur for a moment and felt his rumbling, subsonic purr. He clearly approved of McKeon's argument—or at least of the emotions that went with it. And, she thought, Alistair was right. The Havenite ambassador had played his cards well in his efforts to discredit her, but she'd let him. She'd actually helped him by walking on eggs and trying to hide her hurt and anger when Grayson eyes dismissed her as a mere female instead of demanding the respect her rank and achievements were due.

She pressed her face deeper into Nimitz's warm fur and realized the Admiral had been right, as well. Perhaps not entirely—she still thought her absence would help him get a toe in the door—but mostly. She'd run away from a fight and left him to face the Graysons and their prejudices without the support he had a right to expect from his senior uniformed subordinate.

"You're right, Alistair," she sighed at last, raising her head to look at him. "I blew it."

"Oh, I don't think it's quite that bad. You just need to spend the rest of this trip getting your thoughts straightened out and deciding what you're going to do to the next sexist twit." She grinned appreciatively, and he chuckled. "You and the Admiral can hit 'em high, and the rest of us will hit 'em right around the ankles, Ma'am. If they want a treaty with Manticore, then they'd better start figuring out that a Queen's officer is a Queen's officer, however he—or she—is built. If they can't get that through their heads, this thing is never going to work."

"Maybe." Her grin softened into a smile. "And thanks. I needed someone to kick me in the posterior."

"What are friends for? Besides, I remember someone who kicked my ass when I needed it." He smiled back, then finished his coffee and rose.

"And now, Captain Harrington, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my ship. Thank you for a marvelous dinner."

"You're welcome." Honor escorted McKeon to the hatch, then stopped and held out her hand. "I'll let you find your own way to the boat bay, Commander McKeon. I've got some things to think about before I turn in."

"Yes, Ma'am." He shook her hand firmly. "Good night, Ma'am."

"Good night, Commander." The hatch slid shut behind him, and she smiled at it. "Good night, indeed," she murmured softly.