Mission of Honor

the table as James MacGuiness appeared in the doorway on the other side of the room, keeping an eagle eye on the Navy stewards who'd been sent down from Eighth Fleet to provide him with a reliable, security-screened support group.

'I don't know how important a player he actually is,' she continued, seating herself at the head of the table. 'For that matter, I don't know that he's really as important a player as he thinks he is. Obviously, he's got some stature, or he wouldn't have been included in Pritchart's delegation in the first place. The problem is that he's one of those people who just knows he's smarter, sneakier, and just generally all around better than anyone else. I have no idea what it is he wants out of Pritchart, but whatever it is, it never crossed his mind that he wasn't going to get it in the end. Or not until she asked him for that 'briefing', anyway.'

She chuckled, and most of the others joined her. Then she looked up at MacGuiness.

'And just what are you planning on feeding us this afternoon, Mac?'

'I trust you'll find it palatable, Your Grace,' MacGuiness said with a small bow and a lurking smile.

'But you're not going to tell me what it is until you put it on the table in front of me, are you?'

'I do treasure my little surprises,' he acknowledged with a broader smile, and she shook her head fondly.

'All right, bring it on!' she challenged, and he chuckled as the stewards whipped away covers and set bowls of rich-smelling she crab soup in front of the diners.

* * *

'Excuse me, Your Grace.'

Honor looked up from her second serving of cherry pie as Lieutenant Tьmmel appeared apparently by magic at her shoulder. It was obvious to her that he'd been taking teleportation lessons from MacGuiness, and she'd come to realize she valued his gift for unobtrusiveness even more because Tim Mears hadn't had it. Mears had been just as efficient as Tьmmel, but he'd never had Tьmmel's ability to blend into the background and pop out of it again at exactly the right moment. Which meant it was at least one way in which Tьmmel didn't constantly remind her of her last flag lieutenant and what had happened to him.

'Yes, Waldemar?' she said, allowing no trace of the familiar pain the thought of Mears caused her to show in her eyes or voice.

'We've just received a dispatch from Manticore, relayed from Imperator . It's a personal to you, from Her Majesty, and I'm afraid it's flagged as urgent.'

'I see.'

Honor laid down her fork, wiped her lips on her napkin, and rose. Anxious—or at least intensely speculative —eyes followed her, and she smiled slightly.

'Don't mind me, people,' she said. 'Go ahead and enjoy your dessert.'

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Honor sat back from the display in her own suite's sitting room, and her expression was much less amused than it had been. She tipped back her chair and crossed her legs, and Nimitz flowed up into her lap and sat upright, facing her.

'Not so good, is it, Stinker?' she asked, reaching out to stroke his ears. Actually, she realized, 'not so good' might be putting it entirely too optimistically. The news was over three weeks old, after all. By this time, it was only too probable that Michelle Henke had already had the opportunity to prove—or disprove—the more optimistic estimates of the superiority of Manticoran military hardware. She felt Nimitz's concern mirroring her own, but then he twitched his upper pelvis in imitation of a human shrug.

<Mike is strong,> his fingers flickered. <She can deal with this.>

For just a moment, Honor was tempted to ask what made him an expert on the subject of battle fleets. Fortunately, the temptation disappeared as quickly as it had come. Treecat understanding of advanced technology and weaponry was still for all intents and purposes nonexistent, but those who'd adopted humans had been sufficiently exposed to it to understand what it did, even if they didn't grasp how it did it. And Nimitz had seen more naval combat than the majority of professional naval personnel ever saw in an entire lifetime. Some of that combat had come uncomfortably close to killing both him and Honor. In fact, ever since Paul Tankersley had designed his first treecat skinsuit, he'd seen exactly the same combat she had from exactly the same command bridges.

And he knows Mike better than almost anyone else does, too , she reflected. So, yes, he definitely is entitled to an opinion .

'I hope you're right, Stinker,' she said quietly, instead of what she'd started to say, and he bleeked in amusement as he felt her shift gears. She shook her head at him with a smile and gave his left ear a gentle yank. He smacked her hand with carefully retracted claws, and she chuckled, but then her smile faded and she folded her arms about him, hugging him while she thought.

'The question,' she said aloud, using the 'cat as her sounding board once again, 'is whether or not we tell Pritchart about this.'

<You want to tell her,> Nimitz signed, and she snorted.

'Yes, actually. I do,' she admitted. He flicked his ears in silent question, and she sighed.

'Beth hasn't made Mike's dispatches public yet—or she hadn't when she sent her message, at least. Sooner or later, though, that's going to change, which means Pritchart's going to find out eventually, whatever happens. I don't want her deciding I was so nervous about her possible reaction to the news that I tried to keep it from her. I don't think she's likely to get infected with whatever Younger has and start playing stalling games, but I could be wrong about that. And I've been as candid with her as I could from the very beginning, including leveling with her about Green Pines. I don't want to jeopardize whatever balance of trust I've built up with her.'

Nimitz considered that for several moments, grass-green eyes thoughtful. Unlike any other member of Honor's delegation, he'd been able to sample Eloise Pritchart's mind glow even more thoroughly than Honor had, and it was obvious to her he was considering what she'd said in the light of that insight. She wasn't about to rush him, either. Unlike the steadily decreasing number of Manticorans who continued to reject the evidence of treecat intelligence, Honor Alexander-Harrington had enormous respect both for the ability of 'cats in general to follow complex explanations and for Nimitz's judgment, in particular, where human nature was concerned.

Finally, his fingers began to move again, and her eyes widened.

<The real reason you want to tell her is you like her,> he told her.

'I—' she began, then stopped as she realized that, as usual, Nimitz had come unerringly to the point.

'You're right,' she admitted out loud. 'Which may not be a good thing.' She smiled ruefully. 'I don't think hard-nosed, professional diplomats are supposed to like the people they're trying to beat a treaty out of.'

<So?> Nimitz signed. <Not what Soul of Steel sent you to be. She sent you to get agreement, not just talk and argue. Besides, I like Truth Seeker, too.>

''Truth Seeker'?' Honor repeated, leaning back and looking deep into his eyes. 'Is that what you've decided her treecat name should be?'

Nimitz nodded, and Honor's eyes narrowed. As a general rule, the names treecats assigned to humans usually turned out to be extraordinarily accurate. Some of them were more evocative than truly descriptive—her own, for example, 'Dances on Clouds'—but even those were insightful encapsulations of the humans involved. And now that she thought about it, 'Truth Seeker' summed up her own feel for Pritchart's personality.

Slow down, Honor , she told herself firmly. That's certainly the personality you want her to have, and so does Nimitz. So maybe you're both reading more into what you're picking up from her than is really justified .

And maybe you're not, too .

'And have you come up with a name for Thomas Theisman, too?' she asked.

His right true-hand closed into the letter 'S' and 'nodded' up and down in the sign for 'Yes,' but it seemed to Honor to be moving a little slower than usual. He looked up at her for a second or two, and her eyebrows rose. She could literally feel him hesitating. It wasn't because he was concerned about how she might react to it, but more as if . . . as if he didn't quite expect her to believe it.

Then he raised his right hand, palm-in, touched his forehead with his index finger, then moved it up and to