The Honor of the Qween

and if Yu gets away from me, too—'

The Sword's sentence faded off ominously, and the brigadier swallowed.

* * *

'How many?' Yu asked.

'I make it a hundred sixty, Sir,' Bryan said heavily. Yu's face was stone, but his eyes showed his pain. That was less than twenty-seven percent of his Havenite crew, but there'd been no new arrivals in almost fifteen minutes, and the Masadans were bringing up flamethrowers as well as grenades and rifles. He raised his wrist com to his mouth.

'Sam?'

'Yes, Sir?'

'Get your ass in here. It's time to go.'

* * *

'They've what?!'

'They've launched pinnaces, Sir,' the hapless officer repeated. 'And ... and there was an explosion in the boat bay right after they did,' he added.

Sword Simonds swore savagely and restrained himself—somehow—from physically attacking the man, then wheeled on Lieutenant Hart.

'What's the status of the computers?'

'W-we're still trying to figure out what's wrong, Sir.' Hart met the Sword's eyes fearfully. 'It looks like some sort of security lock-out, and—'

'Of course it is!' Simonds snarled.

'We can get around it eventually,' the white-faced Hart promised. 'It's only a matter of working through the command trees, unless ...'

'Unless what?' Simonds demanded as the Lieutenant paused.

'Unless it's a hard-wired lock, Sir,' Hart said in a tiny voice. 'In that case, we'll have to trace the master circuits till we find it, and without Commander Valentine—'

'Don't make excuses!' Simonds screamed. 'If you hadn't been so fast to shoot Manning down, we could have made him tell us what he did!'

'But, Sir, we don't know it was him! I mean—'

'Idiot!' The Sword backhanded the lieutenant viciously, then whirled to the brigadier. 'Put this man under arrest for treason against the Faith!'

* * *

Captain Yu sat in the copilot's flight couch, watching his beautiful ship fall away astern, and the bitter silence from the pinnace's passenger bay mirrored his own. Like him, the men back there felt enormous relief at their own survival, but it was tempered by shame. They'd left too many of their own behind, and knowing they'd had no choice made them feel no better at all.

A part of Alfredo Yu wished he hadn't made it out, for his shame cut far deeper than theirs. That was his ship back there, and the men aboard it were his men, and he'd failed them. He'd failed his government, too, but the People's Republic wasn't the sort of government that engendered personal loyalty, and not even the knowledge that the Navy would take vengeance upon him for his failure mattered beside his abandonment of his men. Yet he'd had no choice but to save as many as he could, and he knew it.

He sighed and punched up a chart of the system. Somewhere out there was a hiding place where he and his men could conceal themselves until the battle squadrons Ambassador Lacy had summoned arrived. All he had to do was find it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Honor cut another morsel of steak and slid it into her mouth. Eating, she'd found, was a monumental pain when only one side of your face worked. The left side of her mouth was useless for chewing, and she had a humiliating tendency to discover food was dribbling down her dead cheek and chin only when it dripped onto her tunic. She'd made progress over the past few days, but not enough to be willing to eat with an audience.

But at least worrying about eating was fairly mundane, almost comforting, compared to other things. Five days had passed since Apollo's departure. If the Masadans were going to try something more—and despite all she'd said to Venizelos about the insanity of their doing so, she remained convinced they were—she knew it would be soon. Yet, to her own surprise, she could think about it almost calmly. She'd reached a state of balance, of acceptance. She was committed. She'd done all she could to prepare herself and her people. All that remained was to meet whatever came, and once that was accepted, grief and guilt and hatred, like terror, had faded into a strange sort of serenity. She knew it wouldn't last. It was simply the way she adjusted to the waiting, but she was grateful for it.

She chewed very carefully, keeping her numb inner cheek out from between her teeth and glad her tongue had escaped damage, then swallowed and reached for her beer. She sipped with equal care, cocking her head to minimize the chances of a spill. She was just setting her stein back down when the musical tone of a com terminal floated through the dining cabin hatch.

'Bleek?' Nimitz said from his end of the table.

'Beats me,' she told him, and waited. After a moment, MacGuiness poked his head through the hatch with the expression of severe disapproval he reserved for occasions when his captain's meals were interrupted.

'Excuse me, Ma'am, but Commander Venizelos is on the com.' The steward sniffed. 'I told him you're eating, but he says it's important.'

Honor's good eye twinkled, and she used her napkin to hide the smile that twitched the right corner of her mouth. MacGuiness had guarded her rare moments of privacy, especially during meals, like an irritable mastiff ever since she'd been wounded, and he would never forgive her if she giggled.

'I'm sure it really is, Mac,' she soothed, and the steward stepped back with another sniff to let her pass, then crossed to the table and placed the warming cover over her plate. Nimitz looked up at him and, when MacGuiness shrugged his ignorance, hopped down and pattered after his person.

Honor hit the acceptance key to clear the 'WAIT' prompt, and a worried-looking Venizelos appeared on the screen.

'What is it, Andy?'

'RD Niner-Three just picked up a hyper footprint at extreme range, Ma'am, right on the fifty light-minute mark.'

Honor felt the right side of her face turn as masklike as the left. A crack yawned in her serenity, but she schooled herself into calm. At that range, there was time.

'Details?'

'All we've got so far is the alert sequence. Troubadour's standing by to relay the rest of the transmission as it comes in, but—' He paused as someone said something Honor couldn't quite catch, then looked back at his captain. 'Scratch that, Skipper. Commander McKeon says Niner-Two is coming in now, reporting a low-powered wedge moving across its range. Niner-Three has the same bogey and makes it right on the ecliptic. Looks like they're heading around the primary to sneak up on Grayson from behind.'

Honor nodded while her mind raced. That kind of course meant it could only be the Masadans, but they knew Masada still had at least one other hyper-capable ship, so it wasn't necessarily the battlecruiser either. And with Fearless's gravitics down, she couldn't read the drones' FTL pulses direct, which meant she couldn't send Troubadour out to check without losing her real-time link to her main tactical sensors.

'All right, Andy. Alert Admiral Matthews and bring our own wedge up. Have Rafe and Stephen start a plot. Until we get mass readings from one of the drones, that's all we can do.'

'Aye, aye, Ma'am.'

'I'll be right up, and—' Honor paused as she felt a presence behind her. She turned to look over her