The Honor of the Qween

nine, by their shipboard clocks. Left to herself, Fearless could have made the same crossing in less than four.

But that was all right, Honor thought drowsily as Nimitz hopped up onto her chest with his soft, buzzing purr. He curled down and rested his chin between her breasts, and she stroked his ears gently. Four days or ten, it didn't matter. She didn't need to set any records. She did need to deliver her charges safely, and commerce protection was one of the purposes for which cruisers were specifically designed and built.

She yawned, sliding still further down on the couch, and considered getting up and taking herself off to bed, but her sleepy gaze clung to the wavering gray and black and pulsing purple and green of hyper space. It glowed and throbbed, beckoning to her, starless and shifting and infinitely, beautifully variable, and her eyes slipped shut and Nimitz's purr was a soft, affectionate lullaby in the background of her brain.

Captain Honor Harrington didn't even twitch when Chief Steward MacGuiness tiptoed into her cabin and tucked a blanket over her. He stood a moment, smiling down at her, then left as quietly as he had come, and the cabin lights dimmed into darkness behind him.

CHAPTER THREE

White table linens glowed, silver and china gleamed, and conversation hummed as the stewards removed the dessert dishes. MacGuiness moved quietly around the table, personally pouring the wine, and Honor watched the lights glitter deep in the ruby heart of her glass.

Fearless was young, one of the Royal Manticoran Navy's newest and most powerful heavy cruisers. The Star Knight class often served as squadron or flotilla flagships, and BuShips had borne that in mind when they designed their accommodations. Admiral Courvosier's flag cabin was even more splendid than Honor's, and the captain's dining cabin was downright huge by Navy standards. If it wasn't big enough to seat all of Honor's officers—a heavy cruiser was a warship, and no warship had mass to waste—it was more than large enough to accommodate her senior officers and Courvosier's delegation.

MacGuiness finished pouring, and Honor glanced around the long table. The Admiral—who, true to his newly acquired status, had exchanged his uniform for formal civilian dress—sat at her right hand. Andreas Venizelos faced him at her left; from there, her guests ran down the sides of the table in descending order of seniority, military and civilian, to Ensign Carolyn Wolcott at its foot. This was Wolcott's first cruise after graduation, and she looked almost like a schoolgirl dressed up in her mother's uniform. Tonight was also the first time she'd joined her new captain for dinner, and her anxiety had been obvious in her over-controlled table manners. But the RMN believed the proper place for an officer to learn her duties, social as well as professional, was in space, and Honor caught the ensign's eye and touched the side of her glass.

Wolcott blushed, reminded of her responsibility as junior officer present, and rose. The rest of the guests fell silent, and her spine straightened as all eyes turned to her.

'Ladies and Gentlemen,' she raised her wine, her voice deeper and more melodious—and confident—than Honor had expected, 'the Queen!'

'The Queen!' The response rumbled back to her, glasses rose, and Wolcott slipped back into her chair with obvious relief as the formality was completed. She glanced up the table at her captain, and her face relaxed as she saw Honor's approving expression.

'You know,' Courvosier murmured in Honor's ear, 'I still remember the first time it was my turn to do that. Odd how terrifying it can be, isn't it?'

'All things are relative, Sir,' Honor replied with a smile, 'and I suppose it does us good. Weren't you the one who was telling me a Queen's officer has to understand diplomacy as well as tactics?'

'Now that, Captain, is a very true statement,' another voice said, and Honor suppressed a grimace. 'In fact, I only wish more Navy officers could realize that diplomacy is even more important than tactics and strategy,' the Honorable Reginald Houseman continued in his deep, cultured baritone.

'I don't believe I can quite agree with that, Sir,' Honor said quietly, hoping her irritation at his intrusion into a private conversation didn't show. 'At least, not from the Navy's viewpoint. Important, yes, but it's our job to step in after diplomacy breaks down.'

'Indeed?' Houseman smiled the superior smile Honor loathed. 'I realize military people often lack the time for the study of history, but an ancient Old Earth soldier got it exactly right when he said war was simply the continuation of diplomacy by non-diplomatic means.'

'That's something of a paraphrase, and that `simply' understates the case a bit, but I'll grant that it sums up the sense of General Clausewitz's remark.' Houseman's eyes narrowed as Honor supplied Clausewitz's name and rank, and other conversations flagged as eyes turned toward them. 'Of course, Clausewitz came out of the Napoleonic Era on Old Earth, heading into the Final Age of Western Imperialism, and On War isn't really about politics or diplomacy, except inasmuch as they and warfare are all instruments of state policy. Actually, Sun Tzu made the same point over two thousand T-years earlier.' A hint of red tinged Houseman's jowls, and Honor smiled pleasantly. 'Still, neither of them had a monopoly on the concept, did they? Tanakov said much the same thing in his Tenets of War just after the Warshawski sail made interstellar warfare possible, and Gustav Anderman certainly demonstrated the way in which diplomatic and military means can be used to reinforce one another when he took over New Berlin and built it into the Anderman Empire in the sixteenth century. Have you read his Sternenkrieg, Mr. Houseman? It's an interesting distillation of most of the earlier theorists with a few genuine twists of his own, probably from his personal background as a mercenary. I think Admiral White Haven's translation is probably the best available.'

'Ah, no, I'm afraid I haven't,' Houseman said, and Courvosier blotted his lips with his napkin to hide a grin. 'My point, however,' the diplomat continued doggedly, 'is that properly conducted diplomacy renders military strategy irrelevant by precluding the need for war.' He sniffed and swirled his wine gently, and his superior smile reasserted itself.

'Reasonable people negotiating in good faith can always reach reasonable compromises, Captain. Take our situation here, for example. Neither Yeltsin's Star nor the Endicott System have any real resources to attract interstellar commerce, but they each have an inhabited world, with almost nine billion people between them, and they lie less than two days apart for a hyper freighter. That gives them ample opportunity to create local prosperity, yet both economies are at best borderline ... which is why it's so absurd that they've been at one another's throats for so long over some silly religious difference! They should be trading with one another, building a mutually supported, secure economic future, not wasting resources on an arms race.' He shook his head sorrowfully. 'Once they discover the advantages of peaceful trade—once they each realize their prosperity depends on the other's—the situation will defuse itself without all this saber rattling.'

Honor managed not to stare at him in disbelief, but if she hadn't known the admiral so well, she would have assumed someone had failed to brief Houseman. It would certainly be nice to make peace between Masada and Grayson, but her own reading of the download accompanying her orders had confirmed everything the admiral had said about their long-term hostility. And nice as it would be to put that enmity to rest, Manticore's fundamental purpose was to secure an ally against Haven, not engage in a peacemaking effort that was almost certainly doomed to failure.

'I'm sure that would be a desirable outcome, Mr. Houseman,' she said after a moment, 'but I don't know how realistic it is.'

'Indeed?' Houseman bristled.

'They've been enemies for more than six hundred T-years,' she pointed out as gently as she could, 'and religious hatreds are among the most virulent known to man.'

'That's why they need a fresh viewpoint, a third party from outside the basic equation who can bring them together.'

'Excuse me, Sir, but I was under the impression our primary goals are to secure an ally and Fleet base