CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Alfredo Yu knew he ought to be studying Engineering's report on Thunder of God's overhauled tractors, but he frowned sightlessly at the data, unable to concentrate on it. Something about the Masadan reaction was out of kilter. It was wrong, and the fact that he couldn't put his finger on just what that wrongness was only made him even more uneasy.

He pushed back from the terminal to pace fretfully and tried to tell himself he was being silly. Of course something was "wrong" with Masada! He'd failed. Through no fault of his own, perhaps, but he'd failed, and the repercussions of that failure, and its consequences for them, had to be echoing through every Masadan mind and heart.

And yet . . .

He came to a stop, eyes unfocused but intent as he tried to chase down that "yet." Was it the Council of Elders' silence? The halfhearted way Sword Simonds had protested his excuses for keeping Thunder in Endicott? Or simply the sense of doom looming over them all?

He bared his teeth in a humorless smile at his own contrariness. He'd expected hysteria and a welter of conflicting orders from the Council, and the fact that he hadn't gotten those things should have been a vast relief. This stunned, silent lack of reaction was far better suited to his and Ambassador Lacy's purposes—was that why it worried him? Because it was too convenient?

And why should Simonds' pliancy puzzle him? The Sword must be astounded he was still alive. Surely he had to be wondering when his strange immunity would vanish, and a man who felt Death breathing quietly down his neck, never knowing when it might strike, wasn't very likely to be his old, prickly, meddlesome self, now was he?

As for senses of doom, what else could he expect? Despite the front he maintained for his inner circle of Havenite officers, he himself had no hope at all that Manticore would back off because a single Havenite battlecruiser—especially the one who'd started the shooting in the first place—got in the way. And if he didn't believe it, how could he expect his crew to? There was an air of caged lightning aboard Thunder of God, and men did their duty without chatter and tried to believe they would somehow be among the survivors when it was finished.

All of those explanations for his unease were true. Unfortunately, none of them got at the root of whatever was worrying him.

He turned automatically, almost against his will, to the bulkhead calendar display. Three days since Blackbird's destruction. He didn't know exactly when Harrington's freighters had pulled out, but if they hadn't gone sooner, they must have gone as soon as she discovered Thunder's true weight of metal, and that gave him a rough time window. He might have as many as ten days or as few as eight before the Manticoran relief arrived, and every slow-ticking second of anticipation stretched his nerves tighter.

At least the Faithful seemed to realize they'd lost. The Elders' relatively speedy acceptance of his argument that further attacks would be in vain had been a welcome surprise, and if Simonds' decision to reinforce the fortifications scattered about the Endicott System was pointless, it also beat hell out of a do-or-die assault on Grayson.

They were doing exactly what he and Ambassador Lacy wanted them to, so why couldn't he feel any satisfaction?

It was the futility, he decided. The sense that events were in motion, proceeding down a foreordained path no one could alter. His awareness that it simply didn't matter anymore—that the end would be the same, whatever he did, or coaxed them into doing—made inactivity poisonously seductive.

Perhaps that was why he hadn't objected to the Sword's latest orders. Thunder of God had never been intended as a transport, but she was faster even sublight than anything Masada had, and if the thought of cluttering his ship with still more Masadans was unappealing, at least as long as she played passenger liner she wasn't being ordered back to Yeltsin. And it would at least give him the illusion of doing something.

He snorted. Perhaps he and Simonds were more alike than he cared to admit, for it seemed that was an illusion whose preservation they both craved.

He glanced at the calendar again. The first shuttles would be arriving in another nine hours, and he twitched his shoulders straight and headed for the cabin hatch. He and Manning were going to have a hell of a time figuring out where to put them, and that was good. It would give him something constructive to worry about for a while.

Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Thirteenth Earl of White Haven, waited by the access tube as the pinnace docked in HMS Reliant's boat bay. His flagship was already driving towards the hyper limit under maximum military power, and if his rugged face was calm, the skin around his ice-blue eyes was tight.

He folded his hands behind him and knew the full shock hadn't yet hit. Prolong made for long friendships and associations, and he'd known Raoul Courvosier all his life. He was twelve T-years younger than Raoul had been and he'd climbed the rank ladder faster, in no small part because of his birth, but there'd always been a closeness—personal, not just professional—between them. Lieutenant Courvosier had taught him astrogation on his midshipman's cruise, and he'd followed in Captain Courvosier's footsteps as senior tactical instructor at Saganami Island, and argued and planned strategy and deployment policies with Admiral Courvosier for years. Now, just like that, he was gone.

It was like waking up one morning to find he'd lost an arm or a leg in his sleep, but Hamish Alexander was familiar with pain. And terrible as this pain was, it was not what filled him with such fear. Beyond personal grief, beyond even his awareness of the outstanding leadership resource the Navy had lost with Raoul, was the knowledge that four hundred other Navy personnel had died with him, and that a thousand more were all too probably waiting for death in Yeltsin even now—if, indeed, they hadn't already died. That was what made Hamish Alexander afraid.

The tube pressure equalized, and a shortish, sturdy commander, her braided blond hair tucked under the white beret of a starship's commander, stepped out of it. Bosun's pipes shrilled, the side party came to attention, and she saluted crisply.

"Welcome aboard, Commander Truman," he said, returning her salute.

"Thank you, Sir." Truman's face was drawn and etched with weariness. It couldn't have been an easy voyage for her, Alexander thought, yet there was a fresh, peculiarly poignant sorrow he understood too well in her exhausted green eyes.

"I'm very sorry to have pulled you out of Apollo, Commander," he said quietly as they moved towards Reliant's lift, "but I needed to get under way immediately—and I need to know everything someone who was there can tell me. Under the circumstances-" He shrugged slightly, and she nodded.

"I understand, Sir. I hated leaving her, but she needs a dockyard, not me, and Commander Prevost can handle anything that comes up."

"I'm glad you understand." The door closed behind them, and Alexander examined his visitor as the lift started for the bridge. His ships had pulled out of Manticore orbit within fifteen minutes of receiving Apollo's squealed transmission, and he'd seen the cruiser's damage as she rendezvoused with Reliant to send Truman across. He still had only the sketchiest knowledge of events in Yeltsin, but one look at that mangled hull had told him it was bad. It was a miracle Apollo had remained hyper capable, and he'd wondered then what Truman would look like when she came aboard. Now he knew.

"I noticed," he chose his words with care, "that you made excellent time from Yeltsin's Star, Commander."

"Yes, Sir." Truman's voice was uninflected, and Alexander smiled.

"That wasn't a trap, Commander. On the other hand, I know perfectly well you didn't cut thirty hours off the old passage record without playing games with your hyper generator."

Alice Truman looked at him for several silent seconds. Lord Alexander—no, he was the Earl of White Haven, since his father's death—was known for a certain willingness to ignore The Book when it got in his way, and there was an almost conspiratorial gleam under the worry in his eyes.

"Well, yes, My Lord," she admitted.

"How high did you take her, Commander?"

"Too high. We bounced off the iota wall a day out of Yeltsin."

Despite himself, Alexander flinched. Dear God, she must have taken out all the interlocks. No ship had ever crossed into the iota bands and survived—no one even knew if a ship could survive there.

"I see." He cleared his throat. "You were extremely lucky, Commander Truman. I trust you realize that?"

"Yes, Sir. I certainly do."

"You must also be extremely good," he went on in exactly the same tone, "considering that you held her together somehow."

"As you say, My Lord, I was lucky. I also have an extremely good engineer, who may even speak to me again someday."

Alexander's face blossomed with a sudden, almost boyish grin, and Truman grinned back at him. But it was a fragile, fleeting expression that died quickly, and she twitched her shoulders.

"I realize I violated every safety procedure, Sir, but knowing what Captain Harrington faced in Yeltsin, I felt the risk was justified."

"I agree completely—and I've so advised First Space Lord Webster."

"Thank you, Sir," Truman said quietly, and he nodded.

"As a matter of fact, Commander, we're going to be finding out just how good my engineers are. I'm afraid I can't justify taking two full squadrons of battlecruisers quite as high as you went, but I think we can shave a few hours off our return passage, and time is clearly the one thing we don't have."

It was Truman's turn to nod, but the worry was back in her eyes, because time wasn't something "we" didn't have; it was something Grayson and Captain Harrington might already have run out of.

The lift slid to a halt and the door opened onto the flag bridge's hustle and bustle. Alexander's task force was still shaking itself into order—three of his battlecruisers had been transferred abruptly to him to replace ships unready for instant departure—but Captain Hunter, his chief of staff, noted his presence. Hunter said something to the admiral's ops officer and crossed quickly to the lift, holding out his hand to Truman.

"Alice. I heard Apollo's damage was wicked, but it's good to see you again. I only wish it were under other circumstances."

"Thank you, Sir. I do, too."

"Come into the briefing room, Byron," Alexander said. "I think both of us need to go over Commander Truman's story with her in some detail."

"Of course, Sir."

Alexander led the way into the briefing room and waved his juniors into chairs.

"I'm afraid I haven't met Captain Harrington, Commander," he said. "I know her record, but I don't know her or her present situation, so I want you to begin from the beginning and tell us everything that happened from the moment you first entered Yeltsin space."

"Yes, Sir." Truman drew a deep breath and straightened in her chair. "We arrived on schedule, My Lord, and-"

Alexander let her voice roll over him, listening as much to how she spoke as to what she said. His mind worked clearly and coldly, isolating bits of data, noting questions to be raised, filing other answers away, and under his concentration was that icy, personal core of fear.

For despite all the risks Truman had taken, the odds were very high that Honor Harrington and all of her people were already dead, and if they were, Hamish Alexander was about to begin the war Manticore had feared for almost forty years.

"Skipper?"

Honor looked up from her paperwork as Venizelos stuck his head in through the open hatch.

"Yes, Andy?"

"I thought you'd like to know we've got Laser Four back up—sort of. There's still a glitch in the fire control runs somewhere, and the crew's going to have to update the on-mount computers manually, but the bay's vacuum-tight again and all the test circuits are green."

"Well done, Andy!" Honor smiled with the right side of her mouth. "Now if you and James could just get the gravitics back up . . . ?"

She let her voice trail off on a teasing note, and he grimaced.

"Skipper, the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a shipyard."

"That's what I was afraid of." Honor waved at a chair, and the exec eyed her covertly as he parked himself in it.

She looked better, now that quick-heal was fading the horrible contusion which had disfigured her face. The left side was still frozen and dead, but Venizelos was getting used to that. And though her left eye's vision was as impaired as Montoya had feared, the neat black eye patch with which she'd replaced its bulky dressing gave her a sort of raffish toughness.

Yet it wasn't her appearance that mattered, he thought. She'd been madder than hell when she woke from her first sleep in fifty-three hours to discover Montoya and MacGuiness had slipped a mickey into her cocoa. For a while, Venizelos had thought not even the doctor's sworn oath that he could have had her back on her feet in less than fifteen minutes had Thunder of God turned up would keep her from brigging both of them. But it had also put her to sleep for over fifteen hours, and deep inside she must have realized how desperately she'd needed that rest.

Venizelos hadn't known what Montoya intended, but if he had known, he would have drugged her cocoa himself. She'd been tearing apart before his eyes, and he'd been terrified—both for her and for all the people who needed her so badly. It had been dreadful enough when she learned of Admiral Courvosier's death; after what happened to Madrigal's people, it had become terrible to watch. He couldn't blame her for her hatred, and he'd understood her guilt, even if he didn't share her cruel self-conviction that she'd failed the Admiral, but he'd also known they needed her back. If it hit the fan, they needed Honor Harrington on Fearless's bridge, working her magic for them all once more, not an exhausted automaton who'd worn herself into a stupor.

"Well-" she leaned back, and her voice pulled the exec out of his thoughts "—I suppose we're as ready as we're going to get before she turns up."

"You really think she's coming, Skipper? It's been over four days. Wouldn't they've been here by now if they were going to come?"

"You'd think so, yes."

"But you don't, do you?" Venizelos asked, and his eyes narrowed as she shook her head. "Why not, Skipper?"

"I couldn't give you a logical reason." She folded her arms beneath her breasts, her single eye dark and deep. "Anything they do in Yeltsin at this point will only make their own situation worse. If they destroy us or nuke Grayson, the Fleet will turn them into a memory. Even if the Masadans don't know that, the Peeps do. And if they were going to do anything, they should already have done it without giving us time to make repairs and get set, much less giving a relief from Manticore time to get here. And yet . . ."

Her slurred voice trailed off, and Venizelos shivered deep inside. The quiet stretched out until he cleared his throat.

"And yet, Ma'am?" he asked quietly.

"She's out there," Honor said. "She's out there, and she's coming." Her eye focused on his face, and the right side of her mouth quirked at his expression. "Don't worry, Andy—I'm not turning mystic in my old age! But think about it. If they were going to be rational, they should have pulled out the instant the squadron got back. They didn't. Certainly they should have run instead of standing to fight when we came after them at Blackbird! And then-" her voice turned dark and grim "—there's the way they treated Madrigal's people."

She fell silent for a moment, brooding down at the table once more, then shook herself.

"The point is, these aren't rational people. They don't even live in the same galaxy as the rest of us. I can't build a nice, neat enemy intentions analysis, but from what we've seen of them so far, I think—no, I know—they won't change now."

"Not even if the Peeps pull Thunder of God out on them?"

"Now that," Honor admitted, "is the one thing that might stop them. But the question is whether or not the PRH can pull her out, and after what happened at Blackbird, I'm not too optimistic on that point." She shook her head again. "No, I think she's coming. And if she is, we should be seeing her soon. Very soon."