The Honor of the Qween

shoulder, and James MacGuiness folded his arms. She met his eyes for a moment, then turned back to Venizelos. 'I'll be right up as soon as I finish lunch,' she corrected herself meekly, and despite his tension, the exec grinned.

'Yes, Ma'am. I understand.'

'Thank you.' Honor cut the circuit, stood, and marched straight back to the table under her steward's stern gaze.

* * *

Ensign Wolcott felt her own apprehension reflected from the people about her as she updated the rough plot. Commander Venizelos circulated between the control stations, yet Wolcott was more conscious of the Captain's absence than of the Exec's presence. She suspected she wasn't alone in that, either, for she'd seen more than one other glance being cast at the empty chair at the center of the bridge.

She finished and sat back, and a quiet voice spoke in her left ear.

'Don't sweat it, Ensign. If the shit were about to hit the fan, the Skipper wouldn't have taken time to finish lunch.'

She turned her head and blushed as she met Lieutenant Cardones' knowing eyes.

'Was it that obvious, Sir?'

'Well, yes.' Cardones smiled—grinned, really—at her. 'Of course, that could be because I wish she were up here, too. On the other hand, this—' he gestured at their plot '—tells me nothing much is going to happen for a while, and I'd a lot rather have the Old Lady rested when it does happen than have her waste energy holding my hand in the meantime.'

'Yes, Sir.' Wolcott looked back down at the plot. They had tentative mass readings from three drones now, and CIC called it ninety-plus percent that the bogey was the Peep battlecruiser. It wasn't a comforting thought.

She stared at the innocent, unthreatening lines of light and felt her pulse race. Her chestnut hair felt damp with sweat, and there was a hollow, singing void where her stomach should have been. She'd been terrified as Fearless charged into the missiles at Blackbird, but this was worse. Much worse. This time she knew what could happen, for she'd seen ships blown apart, seen the consequences of the cruelty visited upon her classmate Mai-ling Jackson, and lost two close friends aboard Apollo, and she was afraid to her very bones. An awareness of her own mortality filled her, and the enemy's slow, dragging approach gave her too much time to think about it.

'Sir,' she said softly, without looking up, 'you've seen more action than me, and you know the Captain better. Can we—' She bit her lip, then met his gaze almost imploringly. 'How much chance do we really have, Sir?'

'Well ...' Cardones drew the word out and tugged on an earlobe. 'Let me just put it this way, Carol. The first time the Skipper took me into action, I knew she was going to get me killed. I didn't think she was, I knew it, and I just about pissed myself, let me tell you.'

He grinned again, and despite her fear, Wolcott's lips sketched a tremulous smile of their own.

'As it turned out, I was wrong,' Cardones went on, 'and it's a funny thing. You sort of forget to be scared with the Old Lady sitting behind you. It's like you know they'll never get her, and that means they won't get you. Or maybe it's just that you're too embarrassed to be scared when she isn't. Or something.' He shrugged almost sheepishly.

'Anyway, she nailed a seven-and-a-half-million-ton Q-ship with a light cruiser. I figure that means she can take a battlecruiser with a heavy cruiser. And if she were worried, I imagine she'd be sitting up here fretting with the rest of us instead of finishing lunch.'

'Yes, Sir.' Wolcott smiled more naturally and turned back to her panel as her beeping earbug warned of fresh data from Troubadour. She updated the plot again, and Rafael Cardones looked at Commander Venizelos over her lowered head. Their eyes met with a certain sad empathy for Ensign Wolcott. They understood her need for reassurance perfectly ... and they also knew there was a universe of difference between engaging a Q-ship while it tried to run and a battlecruiser which had come to kill you.

* * *

Honor opened the life-support module, and Nimitz hopped into it with an air of resignation. At least this time it wasn't an emergency, and he took time to check the water and food dispenser and arrange his nest to his satisfaction. Then he curled down and looked up at her with an admonishing little sound.

'Yeah, and you be careful, too,' she told him softly, caressing his ears. He closed his eyes to savor her touch, and then she stepped back and sealed the door.

* * *

'CIC confirms the drone mass readings, Ma'am,' Venizelos reported as he met her at the lift. 'She's coming round the backside of the primary.'

'ETA?'

'She's still close to two billion klicks out, Ma'am, and she's holding her accel down to about fifty gees, probably to avoid detection. Her base velocity's up to five-niner-point-five thousand KPS. Assuming she holds current acceleration, she'll hit Grayson in about eight hours at a velocity of approximately seven-four thousand.'

Honor nodded, then turned her head as someone else stepped out of the lift. Stores had found Commander Brentworth a Manticoran skin suit, and only the Grayson insignia stenciled on its shoulders picked him out from the rest of her crew as he gave her a tense smile.

'Still time to put you planet-side, Mark,' she said, her voice low enough no one else could hear.

'This is my assigned duty post, Ma'am.' His smile might be tense, but his voice was remarkably level. Honor's good eye warmed with approval, yet that didn't stop her from pressing the point.

'It may be your assigned post, but we're not going to be doing much liaising over the next few hours.'

'Captain, if you want me off your ship, you can order me off. Otherwise, I'm staying. There ought to be at least one Grayson officer aboard if you're going up against those fanatics for us.'

Honor started to speak again, then closed her mouth and gave a tiny headshake. She touched him lightly on the shoulder, then crossed to DuMorne's astrogation station to look down at his display.

Thunder of God —or Saladin, or whatever she wanted to call the battlecruiser—was holding her acceleration down, but that was probably just a general precaution. She was over a hundred light-minutes from Grayson on her present course, and she was still over forty light-minutes out from Yeltsin, which put her well beyond any range at which any Grayson sensor array could possibly pick up her impellers.

Of course, her captain knew he was up against modern warships, but he certainly didn't see Fearless or Troubadour on his own sensors, nor would the heavily stealthed drones be visible to him. So assuming he didn't know they'd been deployed (which he couldn't) and about their detection range and FTL transmission capability, he had to believe he was undetected so far.

She rubbed the tip of her nose. It wasn't the way she would have proceeded, given the disparity in weight of metal, but he'd clearly opted for a cautious approach. By the time he crossed the outer edge of the Grayson sensor envelope, he'd be on the far side of Yeltsin, and he'd almost certainly cut his drive before he did. That would extend his flight time but bring him around the primary on a ballistic course, and without the betraying grav signature of his impellers, it meant he'd be into missile range of Grayson and firing before active sensors saw him coming.

But she'd already seen him. The question was what she did with her information, and she bent over DuMorne's panel and laid in a rough line for a shorter, tighter course that originated at Grayson and curved around the primary inside Saladin's projected parabola.

'Punch this up and refine it for me, Steve. Assume we go to maximum acceleration on this course. Where would we come into his sensor range?'

DuMorne started crunching numbers, and she watched a hypothetical vector build around Yeltsin as he turned her rough course into a finished one.

'He'd pick us up right about here, Ma'am, one-three-five million klicks out from Yeltsin, in about one-niner-