Changer of Worlds

She turned her head and smiled in response to Commander Layson’s question. The Exec gazed at her sandwich for a moment longer, then shook his head in bemusement, and Lieutenant Jeffers chuckled.

“I’m beginning to understand why we seem to be running a little short on commissary supplies,” he observed. “I always knew midshipmen were bottomless pits, but—”

It was his turn to shake his head, and Layson laughed out loud.

“What I don’t understand,” Lieutenant Tergesen said just a bit plaintively, looking up from her cards at the sound of the Exec’s laughter, “is how you can stuff all that in and never gain a kilo.” The dark-haired engineering officer was in her early thirties, and while she certainly wasn’t obese, she was a shade on the plump side. “I’d be as broad across the beam as a trash hauler if I gorged on half that many calories!”

“Well, I work out a lot, Ma’am,” Honor replied, which was accurate enough, if also a little evasive. People were no longer as prejudiced against “genies” as they once had been, but those like Honor who were descended from genetically engineered ancestors still tended to be cautious about admitting it to anyone they did not know well.

“I’ll say she does,” Ensign Baumann put in wryly. “I saw her and Sergeant Tausig sparring yesterday evening.” The ensign looked around at the wardroom’s occupants in general and wrinkled her nose. “She was working out full contact… with Tausig.”

“With Tausig?” Layson half-turned in his own chair to look more fully at Honor. “Tell me, Ms. Harrington. How well do you know Surgeon Lieutenant Chiem?”

“Lieutenant Chiem?” Honor frowned. “I checked in with him when I joined the ship, of course, Sir. And he was present one night when the Captain was kind enough to include me in his dinner party, but I don’t really know the doctor. Why? Should I, Sir?”

This time the laughter was general, and Honor blushed in perplexity as Nimitz bleeked his own amusement from the back of her chair. Her seniors’ mirth held none of the sneering putdown or condescension she might have expected from someone like a Santino, but she was honestly at a loss to account for it. Lieutenant Saunders recognized her confusion, and smiled at her.

“From your reaction, I gather that you weren’t aware that the good sergeant was the second runner-up in last year’s Fleet unarmed combat competition, Ms. Harrington,” he said.

“That he was—” Honor stopped, gawking at the lieutenant, then closed her mouth and shook her head. “No, Sir, I didn’t. He never—I mean, the subject never came up. Second runner-up in the Fleet matches? Really?”

“Really,” Layson replied for the lieutenant, his tone dry. “And everyone knows Sergeant Tausig’s theory of instruction normally involves thumping on his students until they either wake up in sick bay or get good enough to thump him back. So if you and Doctor Chiem haven’t become close personal acquaintances, you must be pretty good yourself.”

“Well, I try, Sir. And I was on the coup de vitesse demo team at the Academy, but—” She paused again. “But I’m not in the sergeant’s league by a longshot. I only get a few pops in because he lets me.”

“I beg to differ,” Layson said more dryly than ever. “I hold a black belt myself, Ms. Harrington, and Sergeant Tausig has been known to spend the odd moment kicking my commissioned butt around the salle. And he has never ‘let’ me get a hit in. I think it’s against his religion, and I very much doubt that he would decide to make an exception in your case. So if you ‘get a few pops in,’ you’re doing better than ninety-five percent of the people who step onto the mat with him.”

Honor blinked at him, still holding her sandwich for another bite. She’d known Tausig was one of the best she’d ever worked out with, and she knew he was light-years better at the coup than she was, but she would never have had the gall to ask to spar with him if she’d known he’d placed that high in the Fleet competition. He must have thought she was out of her mind! Why in the world had he agreed to let her? And if he was going to do that, why go so easy on her? Whatever Commander Layson might think, Honor couldn’t believe that—

A high, shrill, atonal shriek cut her thought off like an ax of sound, and her sandwich thumped messily onto her plate as spinal reflex yanked her from her chair. She snatched Nimitz up and was out of the wardroom with the ’cat cradled in her arms before the plate slid off the table and the disintegrating sandwich’s stuffing hit the decksole.

* * *

Lieutenant Saunders looked up from his displays and glanced at Honor over his shoulder as she arrived on the bridge, then flicked a look at the bulkhead chrono. It was only a brief glance, and then he gave her a quick, smiling nod as she crossed the command deck to him. Regs allowed her an extra five minutes to get to action stations, in order to give her time to secure Nimitz safely in his life-support module in her berthing compartment, but she’d made it in only thirteen minutes. It helped that Snotty Row was relatively close to the bridge, but it helped even more that she’d spent so many extra hours on suit drill at Saganami Island expressly because she’d known she’d have to find time to get her and Nimitz both cleared for action.

Not that even the amount of practice she’d put in could make it any less uncomfortable to make her skinsuit’s plumbing connections that rapidly, she thought wryly as she settled gingerly into the assistant astrogation officer’s chair. At the moment, Saunders occupied first chair in Astrogation, because Commander Dobrescu was with Commander Layson in Auxiliary Control. In fact, there was an entire backup command crew in AuxCon. Few modern heavy cruisers had auxiliary command decks, since more recent design theory regarded the provision of such a facility in so small a unit as a misuse of mass which could otherwise have been assigned to weapons or defensive systems. In newer ships of War Maiden’s type, an additional fire control position was provided at one end of the core hull instead, with just enough extra room for the ship’s executive officer to squeeze into alongside the Tac Department personnel who manned it. But since War Maiden was an old enough design to provide an AuxCon, Captain Bachfisch had been able to create an entirely separate command crew to back up Commander Layson if something unpleasant should happen to the bridge.

Honor was delighted to be on the bridge itself, but because she was currently assigned to astro training duties, she’d drawn the assistant astrogator’s duty here, while Basanta Lakhia filled the same duty for Dobrescu in AuxCon. The person Honor passionately envied at this moment was Audrey Bradlaugh, who sat beside Lieutenant Commander Hirake at Tactical. Honor would have given her left arm—well, a finger or two off her left hand, anyway—to sit in Audrey’s chair, but at least she was luckier than Nassios. Captain Bachfisch had given Commander Layson the more experienced astrogator, but he’d kept the senior tac officer for himself, which meant Layson was stuck with Elvis Santino… and that Nassios had found himself stuck as Santino’s assistant.

There were, Honor conceded, even worse fates than astrogation training duty.

She pushed the thought aside as she brought her own console rapidly online, and her amusement vanished and her stomach tightened when her astro plot came up and steadied. It lacked the detail of the tactical displays available to Hirake and Captain Bachfisch, but it showed enough for her to realize that this was no drill, for War Maiden’s arrival had interrupted a grim drama. The icon of a merchantman showed in her plot with the transponder code of a Manticoran vessel, but there was another vessel as well, the angry red bead of an unknown, presumably hostile ship less than four hundred kilometers from the merchie. The unknown vessel had her wedge up; the merchantman did not, and a jagged crimson ring strobed about its alphanumeric transponder code.

“Positive ID on the merchie, Skipper,” Lieutenant Commander Hirake reported crisply. “I have her on my shipping list—RMMS Gryphon’s Pride. She’s a Dillingham Cartel ship, all right. Five-point- five million tons, a pure bulk hauler with no passenger accommodations, and she’s squawking a Code Seventeen.”

An invisible breeze blew across the bridge, cold on the nape of Honor’s neck as the tac officer’s announcement confirmed what all of them had already known. Code Seventeen was the emergency transponder code which meant “I am being boarded by pirates.”

“Range to target?” Captain Bachfisch’s tenor was no longer nasal. It was clipped, cool, and clear, and Honor darted a glance over her shoulder. The Captain sat in his command chair, shoulders square yet relaxed, right leg crossed over left while he gazed intently into the tactical display deployed from the chair, and the dark eyes in his thin face no longer frowned. They were the bright, fierce eyes of a predator, and Honor turned back to her own