CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"You're going home, Ensign," Honor said quietly.

She squeezed the shoulder of the young woman in the sickbay bunk while Nimitz crooned on her own shoulder, and Mai-ling Jackson managed a tiny, fragile smile. It wasn't much of a smile, but Honor forced her crippled mouth to smile back into the drug-clouded eyes even as she prayed the therapists could somehow put the ensign back together. Then she stepped back and looked at the life-support equipment enshrouding the bunk beside her. Mercedes Brigham was still unconscious, but Fritz Montoya did good work, and her breathing looked stronger. Honor made herself believe that.

She turned away and almost collided with Surgeon Lieutenant Wendy Gwynn. Apollo's sickbay was small and cramped compared to Fearless's, and the squadron's wounded spilled out of it to fill the wardroom, the officers' mess, and every other unoccupied—and pressure-tight—compartment of the savagely mauled light cruiser. Gwynn was going to have her hands full on the voyage to Manticore, Honor knew, but at least the wounded would be out of it. At least she could get them home alive.

"Take care of them, Doctor," she said, knowing even as she spoke that it was unnecessary.

"We will, Ma'am. I promise."

"Thank you," Honor said softly, and stepped into the passage before Gwynn could see the tears in her eye.

She drew a deep breath and straightened her aching spine, and Nimitz scolded gently. She hadn't slept since waking up in sickbay herself, and he didn't like her exhausted, depressed emotions. Honor didn't much care for them herself, but other people were just as tired as she was. Besides, the nightmares were waiting. She felt them whispering in the depths of her mind, and wondered whether it truly was duty alone which had kept her on her feet so long. Nimitz scolded again, harder, and she caressed his soft fur in mute apology, then headed for the lift to the bridge.

Lieutenant Commander Prevost had one plasticast-sheathed arm in a sling and moved with a painful limp, but her quiet voice was crisp as she spoke to the helmsman. Apollo's executive officer was far from the only walking wounded member of the cruiser's crew. Over half Truman's people were dead or wounded; of her senior officers, only Prevost and Lieutenant Commander Hackmore, Apollo's chief engineer, were still on their feet at all.

"Ready to pull out, Alice?"

"Yes, Ma'am. I wish-" Truman cut herself off with a little shrug and looked at the shattered ruin of Apollo's tactical and astrogation stations and the patches on the bridge's after bulkhead. That hadn't been a direct hit, Honor knew—just a secondary explosion that had killed Lieutenant Commander Amberson, Lieutenant Androunaskis, and the astrogator's entire plotting party.

She held out her hand.

"I know. I wish you could stay, too. But you can't. I wish I could give you more medical staff, God knows Lieutenant Gwynn could use them, but-"

It was Honor's turn to shrug, and Truman nodded as she gripped the proffered hand firmly. If Fearless and Troubadour were called upon to fight Thunder of God, they would need every doctor and SBA they had.

"Good luck, Skipper," she said quietly.

"And to you, Alice." Honor gave her hand one last squeeze, stepped back, and adjusted her white beret. "You have my report. Just-" She paused, then shook her head. "Just tell them we tried, Alice."

"I will."

"I know," Honor repeated, and gave her a nod and a small half-wave, then turned away without another word.

Ten minutes later, she stood on her own bridge, watching the direct vision display as Apollo broke Blackbird orbit. The light cruiser's damage was hideously apparent in her mangled flanks, but she drove ahead at five hundred and two gravities, and Honor made herself look away. She'd done all she could to summon help, yet she knew, deep at the core of her, that if help were truly needed, it would arrive too late.

She felt her tired muscles listing under Nimitz's weight and made herself straighten as she switched the optical pickups to the surface of Blackbird. A time display clicked downward with metronome precision, and the visual dimmed suddenly as it hit zero. A huge, silent boil of white-hot light erupted from the frigid surface, swelling and expanding in the blink of an eye, and she heard her bridge crew's barely audible growl as it wiped away every trace of the Masadan base. Honor watched for a moment longer, then reached up to rub Nimitz's ears and spoke without looking away from the dying explosion.

"All right, Steve. Take us out of here."

The moon fell away from her, and she turned from the display at last as Troubadour formed up on her ship. They were together again—her entire remaining squadron, she thought, and tried to shake the bitterness of the reflection. She was tired. That was all.

"How's our com link to Troubadour, Joyce?" she asked.

"It's solid, Ma'am, as long as we don't get too far away from her."

"Good." Honor glanced at her com officer, wondering if her question made her sound a prey to anxiety. And then she wondered if perhaps she sounded that way because she was. Metzinger was a good officer. She'd tell her if there were any problems. But with her own gravitic sensors down, Fearless could no longer receive FTL transmissions from the recon drones mounting guard against Thunder of God's return. Her ship was as one-eyed as she was, and without Troubadour's gravitics to do her seeing for her . . .

She checked the chrono again and made a decision. Nightmares or no, she couldn't do her job with fatigue poisons clogging her brain, and she folded her hands behind her and walked across the bridge towards the lift.

Andreas Venizelos had the watch, but he rose from the command chair and followed her to the lift door. She felt him behind her and looked over her shoulder at him.

"You okay, Skipper?" he asked in a soft voice. "You look pretty shot, Ma'am." His eyes clung to her face, and she felt his concern for her.

"For someone who's lost half her very first squadron, I'm fine," she replied, equally softly, and the right side of her mouth quirked.

"I guess that's one way to look at it, Ma'am, but we kicked some ass along the way. If we have to, I figure we can kick a little more."

Honor surprised herself with a weary chuckle and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

"Of course we can, Andy." He smiled, and she punched him again, then drew a deep, tired breath. "I'm going to go catch some sleep. Call me if anything breaks."

"Yes, Ma'am."

She stepped into the lift. The door closed behind her.

Alice Truman watched her own display as Fearless and Troubadour headed towards Grayson and bit her lip at the thought of what they might face in the next few days. She hated herself for leaving them, but Commander Theisman had done too good a job on Apollo, and that was all there was to it.

She touched a com stud.

"Engineering, Commander Hackmore," an exhausted voice said.

"Charlie, this is the Captain. You people ready for translation?"

"Yes, Ma'am. About the only parts of this ship I can vouch for are her propulsive systems, Skip."

"Good." Truman never took her eyes from the departing dots of Honor's other ships. "I'm glad to hear that, Charlie, because I want you to take the hyper generator safety interlocks off line."

There was a moment of silence, then Hackmore cleared his throat.

"Are you sure about that, Captain?"

"Never surer."

"Skipper, I know I said propulsion's in good shape, but we took a lot of hits. I can't guarantee there's not damage I haven't found yet."

"I know, Charlie."

"But if you take us that high and we lose it, or pick up a harmonic-"

"I know, Charlie," Truman said even more firmly. "And I also know we've got all the squadron's wounded with us. But if you kill the interlocks, we can cut twenty-five, thirty hours—maybe even a little more—off our time."

"Figure all that out on your own, did you?"

"I used to be a pretty fair astrogator, and I can still crunch numbers when I have to. So open up your little toolbox and go to work."

"Yes, Ma'am. If that's what you want." Hackmore paused a moment, then asked quietly, "Does Captain Harrington know about this, Ma'am?"

"I guess I sort of forgot to mention it to her."

"I see." Truman could feel the tired smile behind the words. "It just, um, slipped your mind, I suppose."

"Something like that. Can you do it?"

"Hell, yes, I can do it. Aren't I the most magnificent engineer in the Fleet?" Hackmore laughed again, more naturally.

"Good. I knew you'd like the idea. Let me know when you're ready."

"Yes, Ma'am. And I just want to say, Captain, that knowing you figured I'd go along with this makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. It must mean you think I'm almost as crazy as you are."

"Flatterer. Go play with your spanners."

Truman cut the circuit and leaned back, rubbing her hands up and down the arms of her chair while she wondered what Honor would have said if she'd told her. There was only one thing she could have said, by The Book, because Truman was about to break every safety reg there was. But Honor had enough on her plate just now. If Apollo couldn't be here to help take that big bastard on, the least she could do was bring back reinforcements as quickly as possible, and there was no point giving Honor something else to worry about.

The commander closed her eyes, trying to forget the exhausted pain she'd seen in Honor's one good eye. The pain had been there from the moment she learned of Admiral Courvosier's death, but it cut deeper now, weighed down by every death her squadron had paid and might still be called upon to pay. Just as her exhaustion, anguish was the price a captain paid for the privilege of command. Civilians—and too many junior officers—saw only the courtesies and deference, the godlike power bestowed upon the captain of a Queen's ship. They never saw the other side of the coin, the responsibility to keep going because your people needed you to and the agony of knowing misjudgment or carelessness could kill far more than just yourself. Or the infinitely worse agony of sentencing your own people to die because you had no choice. Because it was their duty to risk their lives, and it was yours to take them into death's teeth with you . . . or send them on ahead.

Commander Truman could imagine no higher calling than to command a Queen's ship, yet there were times she hated the faceless masses she was sworn to protect because of what protecting them cost people like her crew. People like Honor Harrington. It wasn't patriotism or nobility or dedication that kept men and women on their feet when they wanted to die. Those things might have sent them into uniform, might even keep them there in the times between, when they knew what could happen but it hadn't happened yet. But what kept them on their feet when there was no sane reason for hope were the bonds between them, loyalty to one another, the knowledge others depended on them even as they depended on those others. And sometimes, all too rarely, it came down to a single person it was simply unthinkable to fail. Someone they knew would never quit on them, never leave them in the lurch. Alice Truman had always known there were people like that, but she'd never actually met one. Now she had, and she felt like a traitor for having no choice but to leave when Honor needed her.

She opened her eyes again. If the Lords of Admiralty chose to go by The Book, she would face a Board, certainly, possibly even a full Court, for recklessly hazarding her command. And even if she didn't, there were going to be captains who felt the risk was unjustifiable, for if she lost Apollo, no one in Manticore would even know that Honor needed help.

But hours might make the difference in Yeltsin, and that meant she would never be able to live with herself if she didn't take the chance.

Her intercom beeped, and she pressed the stud.

"Bridge, Captain."

"Safety interlocks disengaged, Skipper," Hackmore's voice said. "This beat-up bitch is ready to roll."

"Thank you, Charlie," Commander Alice Truman said firmly. She checked the maneuvering display. "Stand by to translate in eight minutes."