Mission of Honor

She stiffened in his embrace, and even without her own empathic ability, he could literally feel her effort to reject what he'd just said, to continue to punish herself. But he wouldn't let go—not with his arms, not with the fierce embrace of his heart. He held her ruthlessly, knowing she could feel what he felt, knowing she couldn't escape his love.

For a long, long moment the tension held, and then she sagged against him, and he felt the deep, almost silent sobs shuddering through her. He closed his eyes again, holding her against himself, cradling her in his arms and his love.

He never really knew, later, how long they sat there. It seemed to last forever, yet finally, she shifted slightly, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and he tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and dried her eyes.

'Better?' he asked very quietly.

'Some,' she replied, although she wasn't at all certain that was actually the truth. 'Some.'

'I'm sorry, love,' he said again, softly.

'I know.' She patted the arm still around her gently. 'I know.'

There was another long moment of silence, and then she inhaled deeply and sat up straight.

'I'll miss them,' she told her husband, and her voice remained soft, but her eyes were not. They glittered, still bright with tears, yet there was a darkness beneath that glitter, a hardness beneath those tears.

Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called 'the Salamander.' It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's 'Salute to Spring' spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back.

But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.

And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.

In fact, at this moment, she was .

It was a merciless something, her 'monster'—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not— could not—relent or rest.

'I'll miss them,' she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, 'but I won't forget. I'll never forget, and one day—one day, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them.'

Chapter Thirty-Six

'Thank you for agreeing to see me, My Lady. I realize this is a difficult time for you.'

'Don't thank me, Judah,' Honor replied, standing behind her Landing mansion's desk as James MacGuiness escorted Admiral Judah Yanakov into her office. MacGuiness' composed, professional expression might have fooled a lot of people, but not someone who knew him . . . and Yanakov did. Honor tasted the Grayson admiral's concern for her steward's grief, as well as her own, and she smiled sadly, almost wistfully, as she gripped Yanakov's extended hand. 'It's 'a difficult time' for a lot of people right now.'

'I understand, My Lady.'

Yanakov looked at her searchingly, not trying to hide his concern, and she met his gaze squarely. She was fairly certain he was one of the handful of people who'd figured out she could actually sense the emotions of those about her, although she wasn't at all sure whether he realized she could do it on her own, without Nimitz's presence. In any case, he'd never made any attempt to hide his respect and his genuine affection for her from her, and there was a clean, caring flavor to his worry about her.

Of course, there was something else, as well. She'd expected that when he requested a face-to-face meeting on such short notice.

'Have a seat,' she invited, and he settled into the indicated chair, looking out with her across the waters of Jason Bay through the crystoplast wall. 'Can we offer you something?' she added, and he shook his head.

'I think we're all right then, Mac,' she said, looking up at MacGuiness, and the steward managed an almost normal-looking smile before he bowed slightly and withdrew. She watched him go, then turned her own attention back to the crystoplast.

There was a storm coming in, she thought, gaszing at the black clouds rolling towards the city across the angry whitecaps. A storm that mirrored the one in her own soul.

The final, official count of fatalities was still far from complete, but she knew only too well what it had been for her own family. Aside from her mother and father, the twins, and Hamish, Emily, Raoul, and Katherine, she had exactly five close surviving relatives in the Star Empire. That number would be reduced to four very soon now, because Allen Duncan—her Aunt Dominique's husband—had decided to return to Beowulf. There were too many memories on Sphinx, too much pain when he thought about his wife and all four of his children. Much as he'd come to love Manticore, he needed the comfort of his birth world and the family he had there.

Beyond him, her immediate family, her cousin Sarah, who'd suddenly become the second Countess Harrington, and Benedict and Leah Harrington, her Aunt Clarissa's surviving children, her closest living Manticoran relative was a fifth cousin. She knew how unspeakably lucky she was to still have her parents, her brother and sister, and her own children, but it was hard—hard— to feel grateful when all the rest of her family had been blotted away as brutally and completely as Black Rock Clan.

Nimitz stirred unhappily on his perch by the windows as that thought flickered across her mind, and she tasted his echo of the grief which had swept through every treecat clan on Sphinx. Honor knew, now, that Nimitz and Samantha's decision to move their own family to Grayson had been part of a deliberate, fundamental change in treecat thinking. She suspected that Samantha had played a greater role in pushing through that change than she was prepared to admit to the two-legs, but it had clearly been a reaction to the 'cats' awareness of the dangers human weaponry posed. Yet that awareness had been as close to purely intellectual as a treecat was likely to come. It had been a precaution against a threat they could theoretically envision, but not something the vast majority of them had ever expected to happen.