The Honor of the Qween

Don't waste that, Commodore.'

'Saul's still undamaged—and we're not completely out of it!'

'Both of you together wouldn't make a damn bit of difference to what happens to us,' Alvarez said harshly, 'but if we hit them head-on—' Matthews saw his bared teeth even through his visor. 'Commodore, these assholes have never seen what a Manticoran destroyer can do.'

'But—'

'Please, Commodore.' There was an edge of pleading in the harsh voice. 'It's what the Admiral would have wanted. Don't take it away from us.'

Matthews' fists clenched so hard they hurt, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the com, and Alvarez was right. It wasn't much of a chance for Saul and Covington... but refusing it wouldn't save Madrigal.

'All right,' he whispered.

'Thank you, Sir,' Alvarez said. Then he cleared his throat. 'Admiral Yanakov passed one more message before he died, Sir. He ... asked Admiral Courvosier to tell his wives he loved them. Will you pass that on for us?'

'Yes.' Tears glittered under the word, but Matthews made himself get it out, and Alvarez squared his shoulders.

'I'm not sure what hit us, Sir, but assuming they both fired double broadsides, I'd guess one was a light cruiser. The other was bigger—maybe a heavy cruiser. They're both modern ships. We couldn't get a read on them, but they have to be Havenite. I wish we could tell you more, but—'

He broke off with a shrug, and Matthews nodded again.

'I'll inform Command Central, Captain Alvarez—and I'll see to it Manticore knows, as well.'

'Good.' Alvarez inhaled deeply, then laid his hands on the arms of his chair. 'Then I guess that's about it,' he said. 'Good luck, Commodore.'

'May God receive you as His own, Captain. Grayson will never forget.'

'Then we'll try to make it worth remembering, Sir.' Alvarez actually managed a smile and sketched a salute. 'These bastards are about to find out how a Queen's ship kicks ass.'

The signal died. GNS Covington went back to full power, racing desperately for safety while her single remaining destroyer covered her wounded flank, and there was silence on her bridge.

Astern of her, HMS Madrigal turned alone to face the foe.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Fearless decelerated towards Yeltsin's hyper limit once more, and this time Honor Harrington awaited translation in a very different mood.

Alistair had been right, she thought, smiling at her display. Troubadour led Fearless by half a light-second, and even her light code seemed insufferably pleased with itself. Part of that was any tin-can's cheeky disdain for the heavier ships trailing in her wake, but there was more to it, this time. Indeed, the entire squadron had a new air of determination.

Much of it stemmed from the simple joy of stretching their legs. Once they'd handed off the freighters who'd lumbered them for so long, Honor's ships had made the run back from Casca well up into the eta band, and the sense of release had been even greater because they hadn't realized quite how heavy-footed they'd really felt on the outward leg.

But that explained only a part of her people's mood. The rest stemmed from the conferences she'd had with Alistair and Alice Truman—the conferences whose purpose she'd made certain were known to all of her ships' companies.

She'd been livid when Venizelos brought Ensign Wolcott into her cabin. Wolcott's experience had crystallized her determination in a way all the insults to her hadn't managed, and she'd launched a full-scale investigation aboard all three ships to see what else someone hadn't reported to her.

The response had been sobering. Few of her other female personnel had experienced anything quite so blatant, yet once she started asking questions dozens came forward, and she suspected, not without a sense of shame, that they'd been silent before for the same reasons as Wolcott. She hadn't had the heart to pin the ensign down, but her red-faced circumlocutions as she described what the Grayson had said about Honor had told their own tale. Honor hoped the ensign hadn't hesitated to speak up for fear her captain would blame the bearer of the news for its content, but whether Wolcott had been afraid of her or not, it was clear her own failure to fight back was at least partly to blame for the general silence. What she'd put up with had inhibited Wolcott (and others) from coming forward, either because they felt she'd proven she could endure worse than they had experienced (and expected them to do the same), or because they figured that if she wouldn't stand up for herself, she wouldn't for them.

Honor knew her own sense of failure was what had made her fury burn so bright, but she'd done an excellent—and deliberate—job of redirecting her anger since. However much of it was her fault, none of it would have happened if Graysons weren't bigoted, chauvinistic, xenophobic cretins. Intellectually, she knew there had to be at least a few Grayson officers who hadn't allowed their cultural biases free rein; emotionally, she no longer cared. Her people had put up with enough. She'd put up with enough. It was time to sort Grayson out, and she felt the fierce support of her crews behind her.

Nimitz made a soft sound of agreement from the back of her chair and she reached up to rub his head. He caught her thumb and worried it gently in needle-sharp fangs, and she smiled again, then leaned back and crossed her legs as DuMorne prepared to initiate translation.

* * *

'Now that's peculiar,' Lieutenant Carstairs murmured. 'I'm picking up three impeller signatures ahead of us, Captain, range about two-point-five light-seconds. Our vectors are convergent, and they look like LACs, but they don't match anything in my Grayson data profile.'

'Oh?' Commander McKeon looked up. 'Put it on my—' He broke off as Carstairs anticipated his command and transferred his data to the command chair's tactical repeater. McKeon didn't particularly like his tac officer, but despite a certain cold superciliousness, Carstairs was damned good.

'Thank you,' he said, then frowned. Carstairs' ID had to be correct. The impeller drives were too small and weak to be anything except LACs, but what were they doing clear out here beyond the asteroid belt? And why weren't they saying anything? It would be another sixteen minutes before any transmission from Grayson could reach Troubadour, but the LACs were right next door, and their courses were converging sharply.

'Max?'

'Sir?'

'Any idea what these people are doing way out here?'

'No, Sir,' Lieutenant Stromboli said promptly, 'but I can tell you one weird thing. I've been running back my astro plot, and their drives weren't even on it until about forty seconds ago.'

'Only forty seconds?' McKeon's frown deepened. LACs were very small radar targets, so it wasn't surprising Troubadour hadn't spotted them if their drives had been down. But the squadron's impeller signatures had to stick out like sore thumbs, even on Grayson sensors. If the LACs had wanted to rendezvous with them, why wait nine minutes to light off their own drives?

'Yes, Sir. See how low their base velocity is? They were sitting more or less at rest relative to the belt, then they got underway.' A green line appeared on McKeon's plot. 'See that jog right there?' A cursor blinked beside a sharp hairpin bend, and McKeon nodded. 'They started out away from us under maximum accel, then changed their minds and altered course through more than a hundred seventy degrees towards us.'

'Do you confirm that, Tactical?'