The Honor of the Qween

and she nodded.

'I understand, Sir. I hated leaving her, but she needs a dockyard, not me, and Commander Prevost can handle anything that comes up.'

'I'm glad you understand.' The door closed behind them, and Alexander examined his visitor as the lift started for the bridge. His ships had pulled out of Manticore orbit within fifteen minutes of receiving Apollo's squealed transmission, and he'd seen the cruiser's damage as she rendezvoused with Reliant to send Truman across. He still had only the sketchiest knowledge of events in Yeltsin, but one look at that mangled hull had told him it was bad. It was a miracle Apollo had remained hyper capable, and he'd wondered then what Truman would look like when she came aboard. Now he knew.

'I noticed,' he chose his words with care, 'that you made excellent time from Yeltsin's Star, Commander.'

'Yes, Sir.' Truman's voice was uninflected, and Alexander smiled.

'That wasn't a trap, Commander. On the other hand, I know perfectly well you didn't cut thirty hours off the old passage record without playing games with your hyper generator.'

Alice Truman looked at him for several silent seconds. Lord Alexander—no, he was the Earl of White Haven, since his father's death—was known for a certain willingness to ignore The Book when it got in his way, and there was an almost conspiratorial gleam under the worry in his eyes.

'Well, yes, My Lord,' she admitted.

'How high did you take her, Commander?'

'Too high. We bounced off the iota wall a day out of Yeltsin.'

Despite himself, Alexander flinched. Dear God, she must have taken out all the interlocks. No ship had ever crossed into the iota bands and survived—no one even knew if a ship could survive there.

'I see.' He cleared his throat. 'You were extremely lucky, Commander Truman. I trust you realize that?'

'Yes, Sir. I certainly do.'

'You must also be extremely good,' he went on in exactly the same tone, 'considering that you held her together somehow.'

'As you say, My Lord, I was lucky. I also have an extremely good engineer, who may even speak to me again someday.'

Alexander's face blossomed with a sudden, almost boyish grin, and Truman grinned back at him. But it was a fragile, fleeting expression that died quickly, and she twitched her shoulders.

'I realize I violated every safety procedure, Sir, but knowing what Captain Harrington faced in Yeltsin, I felt the risk was justified.'

'I agree completely—and I've so advised First Space Lord Webster.'

'Thank you, Sir,' Truman said quietly, and he nodded.

'As a matter of fact, Commander, we're going to be finding out just how good my engineers are. I'm afraid I can't justify taking two full squadrons of battlecruisers quite as high as you went, but I think we can shave a few hours off our return passage, and time is clearly the one thing we don't have.'

It was Truman's turn to nod, but the worry was back in her eyes, because time wasn't something 'we' didn't have; it was something Grayson and Captain Harrington might already have run out of.

The lift slid to a halt and the door opened onto the flag bridge's hustle and bustle. Alexander's task force was still shaking itself into order—three of his battlecruisers had been transferred abruptly to him to replace ships unready for instant departure—but Captain Hunter, his chief of staff, noted his presence. Hunter said something to the admiral's ops officer and crossed quickly to the lift, holding out his hand to Truman.

'Alice. I heard Apollo's damage was wicked, but it's good to see you again. I only wish it were under other circumstances.'

'Thank you, Sir. I do, too.'

'Come into the briefing room, Byron,' Alexander said. 'I think both of us need to go over Commander Truman's story with her in some detail.'

'Of course, Sir.'

Alexander led the way into the briefing room and waved his juniors into chairs.

'I'm afraid I haven't met Captain Harrington, Commander,' he said. 'I know her record, but I don't know her or her present situation, so I want you to begin from the beginning and tell us everything that happened from the moment you first entered Yeltsin space.'

'Yes, Sir.' Truman drew a deep breath and straightened in her chair. 'We arrived on schedule, My Lord, and—'

Alexander let her voice roll over him, listening as much to how she spoke as to what she said. His mind worked clearly and coldly, isolating bits of data, noting questions to be raised, filing other answers away, and under his concentration was that icy, personal core of fear.

For despite all the risks Truman had taken, the odds were very high that Honor Harrington and all of her people were already dead, and if they were, Hamish Alexander was about to begin the war Manticore had feared for almost forty years.

* * *

'Skipper?'

Honor looked up from her paperwork as Venizelos stuck his head in through the open hatch.

'Yes, Andy?'

'I thought you'd like to know we've got Laser Four back up—sort of. There's still a glitch in the fire control runs somewhere, and the crew's going to have to update the on-mount computers manually, but the bay's vacuum- tight again and all the test circuits are green.'

'Well done, Andy!' Honor smiled with the right side of her mouth. 'Now if you and James could just get the gravitics back up ... ?'

She let her voice trail off on a teasing note, and he grimaced.

'Skipper, the difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a shipyard.'

'That's what I was afraid of.' Honor waved at a chair, and the exec eyed her covertly as he parked himself in it.

She looked better, now that quick-heal was fading the horrible contusion which had disfigured her face. The left side was still frozen and dead, but Venizelos was getting used to that. And though her left eye's vision was as impaired as Montoya had feared, the neat black eye patch with which she'd replaced its bulky dressing gave her a sort of raffish toughness.

Yet it wasn't her appearance that mattered, he thought. She'd been madder than hell when she woke from her first sleep in fifty-three hours to discover Montoya and MacGuiness had slipped a mickey into her cocoa. For a while, Venizelos had thought not even the doctor's sworn oath that he could have had her back on her feet in less than fifteen minutes had Thunder of God turned up would keep her from brigging both of them. But it had also put her to sleep for over fifteen hours, and deep inside she must have realized how desperately she'd needed that rest.

Venizelos hadn't known what Montoya intended, but if he had known, he would have drugged her cocoa himself. She'd been tearing apart before his eyes, and he'd been terrified—both for her and for all the people who needed her so badly. It had been dreadful enough when she learned of Admiral Courvosier's death; after what happened to Madrigal's people, it had become terrible to watch. He couldn't blame her for her hatred, and he'd understood her guilt, even if he didn't share her cruel self-conviction that she'd failed the Admiral, but he'd also known they needed her back. If it hit the fan, they needed Honor Harrington on Fearless's bridge, working her magic for them all once more, not an exhausted automaton who'd worn herself into a stupor.

'Well—' she leaned back, and her voice pulled the exec out of his thoughts '—I suppose we're as ready as we're going to get before she turns up.'

'You really think she's coming, Skipper? It's been over four days. Wouldn't they've been here by now if they