On Basilisk Station

anyone who had been on Medusa—who had seen what the Medusans had done to Lieutenant Malcolm's patrol, who remembered the drug lab explosion or the slaughter to which Haven had delivered the Medusan nomads—forget or forgive, and in the meantime, the Queen had taken steps to express her displeasure.

By Crown Proclamation, any Haven-registered ship passing through the Junction, regardless of destination or normal diplomatic immunity, must submit to boarding and search before she would be allowed passage. Moreover, no Havenite warship would be permitted transit under any circumstances. There had been no negotiation on those points; Haven could take it or leave it ... and add months to every cruise their freighters made.

The Republic had accepted the deliberate, calculated humiliation, for refusal would have driven even their own cargoes into freighters which could use the Junction, with disastrous effects upon their carrying trade. But because there was no proof, Haven had still been able to protest its innocence and scream to galactic public opinion over the Kingdom's 'highhanded discrimination' and the lengths to which Manticore had gone to smear its good name.

No Manticoran believed them, of course, just as no one in the Kingdom believed their violent protests about one Commander Harrington's unprovoked attack upon an unarmed merchantman and her callous murder of its entire crew. It wasn't as if they'd had much choice about protesting, unless they wanted to admit what they'd actually been up to, but they'd gone so far as to demand Honor's extradition to stand trial for murder in a Havenite court. She'd been amused by that, until one of the government's foreign affairs experts explained the propaganda theory of the 'big lie' to her.

She found it difficult to credit, even now, that anyone, anywhere, could possibly believe the nonsense being spouted by the Haven Information Ministry, but the expert had only shaken his head and sighed. The bigger the lie, apparently, the more likely the uninformed were to accept it, simply because they couldn't believe any government would tell such an absurd story unless it were true. And, she supposed, the fact that Haven had tried her in absentia (legal under what passed for Havenite law when Manticore refused to extradite her), found her guilty, and condemned her to death, had been the frosting on the cake.

But the Kingdom had responded to Haven's claims in unambiguous fashion. Honor smiled and straightened her cuffs, brown eyes glinting as she savored the four gold rings of a Captain of the List. They'd jumped her two full grades, clear past captain (junior grade), and Admiral Cortez had been almost apologetic about the fact that she hadn't been knighted. He'd talked his way around the point for several minutes, concentrating rather unconvincingly on the diplomatic repercussions and the effect on 'neutral opinion' should the Crown knight someone Haven's courts had sentenced to death as a mass murderer, but the way he'd said it had carried quite another message. It wasn't Haven or the Solarian League which concerned the Government; it was the Liberals and Conservative Association. They'd taken a beating over Basilisk, but their power hadn't been broken, and in typical politico fashion, they blamed all their trials on Captain Harrington and not their own stupidity and short-sightedness.

Honor didn't mind. She looked down at the ribbon of the Manticore Cross, the Kingdom's second highest award for valor, gleaming blood-red against her space-black tunic. She had that to signify the Navy's and her Queen's opinion of her, just as she had her new ship, and she'd made list at last. Her feet were firmly on the ladder to flag rank, and no one—not Pavel Young, not the Republic of Haven, and not Countess Marisa or Sir Edward Janacek—could ever knock her off it again.

She sighed and raised a hand, pressing it to the plastic as if to bid Fearless farewell, then turned to leave, only to pause as someone called her name.

'Captain Harrington?'

She turned back to see a portly commodore puffing his way along the gallery towards her. She'd never seen him before, but he came to a halt before her and beamed, almost as if he intended to throw his arms about her.

'Yes, Sir?' she replied in a puzzled voice.

'Oh, excuse me. You wouldn't know. I'm Andrew Yerensky.' He held out his hand, and Honor took it.

'Commodore Yerensky,' she said, still wondering why he'd obviously sought her out.

'I wanted to talk to you about your action in Basilisk, Captain,' Yerensky explained. 'You see, I'm on the Weapons Development Board down at BuShips.'

'Oh.' Honor nodded. Now she understood; it was about time somebody finally took official notice of the stupidity of Fearless's armament alterations.

'Yes, indeed,' Yerensky beamed. 'I've read your combat report. Brilliant, Captain! Simply brilliant the way you sucked Sirius in and took her out! In fact, I'm hoping that you'd be willing to address a formal meeting of the board about your action and tactics next week. Admiral Hemphill's our chairman, you know, and she's placed consideration of the demonstrated effectiveness of the grav lance/energy torpedo weapons mix on the agenda.'

Honor blinked. Admiral Hemphill? He couldn't possibly mean—!

'We were delighted by the outcome of your action, Captain,' Yerensky burbled on. 'It was a brilliant vindication of the new armament concept! Just think—your old, undersized little cruiser took on and defeated an eight-million-ton Q-ship with the armament of a battlecruiser! Why, when I think how impossible that would have been with one of the old, traditionally-armed cruisers, I can hardly—'

Honor stared at him in disbelief as he babbled on and on about 'new thinking' and 'proper weapon systems for modern warships' and 'gave you the edge you really needed, didn't they?'—and something hot and primitive boiled deep within her. Her eyes hardened, and Nimitz hunkered down on her shoulder and bared his fangs while her fingers twitched with the physical urge to throttle the pompous twit. His 'new thinking' had gotten over half her crew killed or wounded by forcing her to close straight up Sirius's wake, and it wasn't 'proper weapons' which had saved what was left of Fearless —it had been Honor's people, their guts and blood and pain, and the definite partiality of Almighty God!

Her nostrils flared, but the commodore didn't even notice. He just went on and on, patting himself on the back so hard she expected him to sprain his shoulder, and the corner of her mouth began to twitch.

Talk to his board members? He wanted her to talk to his board members and tell them what a stroke of genius Fearless's refit had been?! She glared at him, sucking in breath to tell him exactly where he could put his invitation, but then a new thought struck her. She reared back to consider it, and the tick died. Her eyes began to twinkle instead of glare, and she fought back a sudden urge to giggle in his face as he slithered to a halt at last.

'Excuse me, Commodore,' she heard herself say, 'but let me be sure I've got this straight. You want me to address an official panel of the Weapons Development Board and give them my combat evaluation of Fearless's weapon systems?'

'Precisely, Captain!' Yerensky enthused. 'Our more progressive members—the whole Navy, in fact—would be eternally in your debt. The personal testimony of an officer who's proven their efficacy in actual combat would have tremendous weight with the more reactionary, stick-in-the-mud board members, I'm sure, and God knows we need all the help we can get. Why, some of those die-hards actually refuse to admit it was your weapons—and skill, of course—which made your victory possible!'

'Shocking,' Honor murmured. She cocked her head, and her glowing brown eyes danced while her firm lips blossomed into an immense smile. 'Well, Commodore Yerensky, I don't see how I could possibly turn your request down. It happens that I do have very strong feelings about the new armament—' her smile grew even broader '—and I'd be delighted to share them with Admiral Hemphill and her colleagues.'

APPENDIX

A Note on Time

As the rest of humanity, Manticorans use standard seconds, minutes, and hours, and Old Earth's 365.26- day year serves as the 'Standard Reckoning Year,' or 'T-year,' the common base to which local dates throughout known space are converted for convenience in interstellar trade and communication. Like most extra-Solar polities,