The Honor of the Qween

'My God, Honor! What are you doing out of sickbay?!' Truman's green eyes clung to her wounded face for just a moment, then moved deliberately away, focusing on her single uncovered eye. 'I've got most of the fires under control, and I'd have been perfectly happy coming down there to see you.'

'I know.' Honor waved to a chair and watched her subordinate sit. 'But I'm not dead yet,' she went on, hating the slowness of her own speech, 'and I'm not going to lie around.'

Truman glared at Venizelos, and the Exec shrugged.

'Fritz and I tried, Commander. It didn't seem to do much good.'

'No, it didn't.' Honor agreed. 'So don't try anymore. Just tell me what's going on.'

'Are you sure you're up to this? You— I'm sorry, Honor, but you have to know you look like hell, and you don't sound too good, either.'

'I know. Mostly it's just my lips, though,' she half-lied. She touched the left side of her mouth and wished she could feel it. 'You talk. I'll listen. Start with the Protector. Is he alive?'

'Well, if you're sure.' Truman sounded doubtful, but Honor nodded firmly and the commander shrugged. 'All right—and, yes, he and his family are all unhurt. It's been—' she checked her chrono '—about twenty minutes since my last update, and only about five hours since the assassination attempt, so I can't give you any hard and firm details. As far as I can make out, though, you wound up square in the middle of a coup attempt.'

'Clinkscales?' she asked, but Truman shook her head.

'No, that was my first thought, too, when we thought it was Security people, but they weren't real Security men, after all. They were members of something called `The Brotherhood of Maccabeus,' some kind of fundamentalist underground no one even suspected existed.' Truman paused and frowned. 'I'm not too sure I'm entirely ready to accept that they didn't know anything about it.'

'I believe it, Ma'am.' Venizelos turned to Honor. 'I've been monitoring the planetary news nets a bit more closely than Commander Truman's had time for, Skipper. Aside from some pretty graphic video,' he looked at her a bit oddly, 'it's all conjecture with a hefty dose of hysteria, but one thing seems pretty clear. Nobody down there ever heard of the `Maccabeans,' and no one's sure what they were trying to accomplish, either.'

Honor nodded. She wasn't surprised the Graysons were in an uproar. Indeed, it would have amazed her if they hadn't been. But if Protector Benjamin was unhurt there was still a government, and at the moment, that was all she really had time to concern herself with.

'The evacuation?' she asked Truman.

'Underway,' the commander assured her. 'The freighters pulled out an hour ago, and I sent Troubadour along as far as the hyper limit to be on the safe side. Her sensors should give them plenty of warning to evade any bogeys they meet before translating.'

'Good.' Honor rubbed the right side of her face. The muscles on that side ached from having to do almost the whole job of moving her jaw by themselves, and the thought of trying to chew appalled her.

'Any movement out of the Masadans?' she asked after a moment.

'None. We know they know we're here, and I'd have expected them to try something by now, but there's not a sign of them.'

'Command Central?'

'Not a peep out of them, Ma'am,' Venizelos said. 'Your Commander Brentworth is still aboard, but even he can't get much out of them right now.'

'I wouldn't be too surprised by that, Honor,' Truman cautioned. 'If these crazies really did blind-side Grayson Security, they have to be worrying about moles in the military, at least until they get some kind of fix on how extensive the plot really was. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some idiot's already come up with the theory that what happened to their navy was part of some Machiavellian `betrayal by the high command' to set up the assassination.'

'So we're all there is for now,' Honor said even more slowly than her damaged mouth required. 'What's the status on Troubadour's alpha node?'

'The Grayson yard people confirm Alistair's original estimate,' Truman replied. 'It's completely gone, and they can't repair it. Their Warshawski technology's even cruder than I thought, and their components simply won't mate with ours, but their standard impellers are a lot closer to our levels, and Lieutenant Anthony got with their chief shipwright before I sent Troubadour off with the freighters. By the time she gets back, the Graysons should have run up jury-rigged beta nodes to replace the damaged beta and alpha nodes. She still won't have Warshawski capability, but she'll be back up to five-twenty gees for max acceleration.'

'Time to change over?'

'Anthony estimates twenty hours; the Graysons say fifteen. In this case, the Graysons are probably closer to right. I think Anthony's less than impressed by their technical support and underestimates its capabilities.'

Honor nodded, then snatched her hand away before it could begin massaging her face again.

'All right. If we can stand her down long enough, then—'

Her terminal beeped, and she pressed the answer key. 'Yes?'

'Captain, I've got a personal signal for you from Grayson,' Lieutenant Metzinger's voice said. 'From Protector Benjamin.'

Honor looked at her subordinates, then straightened in her chair.

'Switch him through,' she said.

Her terminal screen blinked instantly to life, and a drawn and weary Benjamin Mayhew looked out of it. His eyes widened, then darkened with distress as he saw her face and covered eye.

'Captain Harrington, I—' His voice was husky, and he had to stop and cough, then blinked hard and cleared his throat noisily.

'Thank you,' he said finally. 'You saved my family's lives, and my own. I am eternally in your debt.'

The live side of Honor's face heated, and she shook her head.

'Sir, you saved my life in the end. And I was only protecting myself, as well.'

'Of course.' Mayhew managed a tired smile. 'That's why you and your treecat—' His eyes cut suddenly to her unoccupied shoulder. 'He is all right, isn't he? I understood—'

'He's fine, Sir.' She kicked herself for speaking too quickly in her haste to reassure him, for the words had come out so slurred they were almost incomprehensible. Rather than embarrass herself by repeating them, she scooped Nimitz up and exhibited him to the com pickup, and Mayhew relaxed a bit.

'Thank God for that! Elaine was almost as worried over him as we've all been over you, Captain.'

'We're tough, Sir,' she said slowly and distinctly. 'We'll be all right.'

He looked doubtfully at her crippled face and tried to hide his dismay. He knew Manticoran medical science was better than anything available on Grayson, but he'd seen the bloody wreckage of her eye as the RMN medics —and grim-faced Royal Manticoran Marines in full battle dress—whisked her away. The rest of the damage looked even worse now, and her slurred speech and paralyzed muscles were only too evident ... and hideous. The swollen, frozen deadness of a face which had been so mobile and expressive was a desecration, and despite any off-world sophistication, he was a Grayson. Nothing could completely eradicate the belief that women were supposed to be protected, and the fact that she'd suffered her injuries protecting him only made it worse.

'Really, Sir. We'll be fine,' she said, and he decided he had no choice but to take her at her word.

'I'm glad to hear it. In the meantime, however,' his voice turned suddenly harsher, 'I thought you might like to hear who was behind the coup.'

'You know?' Honor leaned forward and felt Venizelos and Truman stiffen with matching interest.

'Yes.' Mayhew looked almost physically ill. 'We've got his confession on tape. It was my cousin Jared.'

'Your cousin?' Honor gasped before she could stop herself, and he nodded miserably.

'Apparently all his anti-Masadan rhetoric's been nothing more than a cover, Captain. He's been working for them for over eight years. In fact, Councilman Clinkscales now thinks he was the second `Maccabeus,' not the first. He thinks my Uncle Oliver passed the position on to him when he died.'

'My God,' Honor whispered.