The Honor of the Qween

Apollo broke Blackbird orbit. The light cruiser's damage was hideously apparent in her mangled flanks, but she drove ahead at five hundred and two gravities, and Honor made herself look away. She'd done all she could to summon help, yet she knew, deep at the core of her, that if help were truly needed, it would arrive too late.

She felt her tired muscles listing under Nimitz's weight and made herself straighten as she switched the optical pickups to the surface of Blackbird. A time display clicked downward with metronome precision, and the visual dimmed suddenly as it hit zero. A huge, silent boil of white-hot light erupted from the frigid surface, swelling and expanding in the blink of an eye, and she heard her bridge crew's barely audible growl as it wiped away every trace of the Masadan base. Honor watched for a moment longer, then reached up to rub Nimitz's ears and spoke without looking away from the dying explosion.

'All right, Steve. Take us out of here.'

The moon fell away from her, and she turned from the display at last as Troubadour formed up on her ship. They were together again—her entire remaining squadron, she thought, and tried to shake the bitterness of the reflection. She was tired. That was all.

'How's our com link to Troubadour, Joyce?' she asked.

'It's solid, Ma'am, as long as we don't get too far away from her.'

'Good.' Honor glanced at her com officer, wondering if her question made her sound a prey to anxiety. And then she wondered if perhaps she sounded that way because she was. Metzinger was a good officer. She'd tell her if there were any problems. But with her own gravitic sensors down, Fearless could no longer receive FTL transmissions from the recon drones mounting guard against Thunder of God's return. Her ship was as one-eyed as she was, and without Troubadour's gravitics to do her seeing for her ...

She checked the chrono again and made a decision. Nightmares or no, she couldn't do her job with fatigue poisons clogging her brain, and she folded her hands behind her and walked across the bridge towards the lift.

Andreas Venizelos had the watch, but he rose from the command chair and followed her to the lift door. She felt him behind her and looked over her shoulder at him.

'You okay, Skipper?' he asked in a soft voice. 'You look pretty shot, Ma'am.' His eyes clung to her face, and she felt his concern for her.

'For someone who's lost half her very first squadron, I'm fine,' she replied, equally softly, and the right side of her mouth quirked.

'I guess that's one way to look at it, Ma'am, but we kicked some ass along the way. If we have to, I figure we can kick a little more.'

Honor surprised herself with a weary chuckle and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

'Of course we can, Andy.' He smiled, and she punched him again, then drew a deep, tired breath. 'I'm going to go catch some sleep. Call me if anything breaks.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

She stepped into the lift. The door closed behind her.

* * *

Alice Truman watched her own display as Fearless and Troubadour headed towards Grayson and bit her lip at the thought of what they might face in the next few days. She hated herself for leaving them, but Commander Theisman had done too good a job on Apollo, and that was all there was to it.

She touched a com stud.

'Engineering, Commander Hackmore,' an exhausted voice said.

'Charlie, this is the Captain. You people ready for translation?'

'Yes, Ma'am. About the only parts of this ship I can vouch for are her propulsive systems, Skip.'

'Good.' Truman never took her eyes from the departing dots of Honor's other ships. 'I'm glad to hear that, Charlie, because I want you to take the hyper generator safety interlocks off line.'

There was a moment of silence, then Hackmore cleared his throat.

'Are you sure about that, Captain?'

'Never surer.'

'Skipper, I know I said propulsion's in good shape, but we took a lot of hits. I can't guarantee there's not damage I haven't found yet.'

'I know, Charlie.'

'But if you take us that high and we lose it, or pick up a harmonic—'

'I know, Charlie,' Truman said even more firmly. 'And I also know we've got all the squadron's wounded with us. But if you kill the interlocks, we can cut twenty-five, thirty hours—maybe even a little more—off our time.'

'Figure all that out on your own, did you?'

'I used to be a pretty fair astrogator, and I can still crunch numbers when I have to. So open up your little toolbox and go to work.'

'Yes, Ma'am. If that's what you want.' Hackmore paused a moment, then asked quietly, 'Does Captain Harrington know about this, Ma'am?'

'I guess I sort of forgot to mention it to her.'

'I see.' Truman could feel the tired smile behind the words. 'It just, um, slipped your mind, I suppose.'

'Something like that. Can you do it?'

'Hell, yes, I can do it. Aren't I the most magnificent engineer in the Fleet?' Hackmore laughed again, more naturally.

'Good. I knew you'd like the idea. Let me know when you're ready.'

'Yes, Ma'am. And I just want to say, Captain, that knowing you figured I'd go along with this makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. It must mean you think I'm almost as crazy as you are.'

'Flatterer. Go play with your spanners.'

Truman cut the circuit and leaned back, rubbing her hands up and down the arms of her chair while she wondered what Honor would have said if she'd told her. There was only one thing she could have said, by The Book, because Truman was about to break every safety reg there was. But Honor had enough on her plate just now. If Apollo couldn't be here to help take that big bastard on, the least she could do was bring back reinforcements as quickly as possible, and there was no point giving Honor something else to worry about.

The commander closed her eyes, trying to forget the exhausted pain she'd seen in Honor's one good eye. The pain had been there from the moment she learned of Admiral Courvosier's death, but it cut deeper now, weighed down by every death her squadron had paid and might still be called upon to pay. Just as her exhaustion, anguish was the price a captain paid for the privilege of command. Civilians—and too many junior officers—saw only the courtesies and deference, the godlike power bestowed upon the captain of a Queen's ship. They never saw the other side of the coin, the responsibility to keep going because your people needed you to and the agony of knowing misjudgment or carelessness could kill far more than just yourself. Or the infinitely worse agony of sentencing your own people to die because you had no choice. Because it was their duty to risk their lives, and it was yours to take them into death's teeth with you ... or send them on ahead.

Commander Truman could imagine no higher calling than to command a Queen's ship, yet there were times she hated the faceless masses she was sworn to protect because of what protecting them cost people like her crew. People like Honor Harrington. It wasn't patriotism or nobility or dedication that kept men and women on their feet when they wanted to die. Those things might have sent them into uniform, might even keep them there in the times between, when they knew what could happen but it hadn't happened yet. But what kept them on their feet when there was no sane reason for hope were the bonds between them, loyalty to one another, the knowledge others depended on them even as they depended on those others. And sometimes, all too rarely, it came down to a single person it was simply unthinkable to fail. Someone they knew would never quit on them, never leave them in the lurch. Alice Truman had always known there were people like that, but she'd never actually met one. Now she had, and she felt like a traitor for