Field Of Dishonor

laughed and responded with a regal bow, but then her head snapped up in shock as the opening notes of the fanfare of the Saganami March suddenly rippled pure and golden over the boat bay speakers.

She spun to face the boat bay gallery, eyes wide, and a command cut through the majestic strains of the Royal Manticoran Navy's anthem.

'Preeeesent arms!' it barked, and hands slapped pulser stocks with crisp precision as the Marine honor guard obeyed. Colonel Ramirez and Major Hibson were there, but they stood to one side, watching as Captain Tyler, the senior Marine to survive the Battle of Hancock, whipped her dress sword up in salute. She and her people were a solid block of gorgeous green-and-black dress uniforms, but the gallery bulkheads were lined with Navy officers and ratings, all stiffly at attention to form a black-and-gold double line to the side party waiting at the mouth of the boarding tube.

Henke turned back to Honor, eyes bright.

'You set me up!' she accused under cover of the anthem, and Honor shook her head.

'Not me. It was the crew's idea. I just had Mac warn them you were on your way.'

Henke started to say something more, then swallowed and turned back to the gallery. She squared her shoulders and marched down its length between the rigid lines with Honor at her heels. They reached the boarding tube, and Commander Chandler snapped a parade-ground salute.

Henke returned it, and the diminutive redhead who'd replaced her as Nike's exec extended her hand as the music died.

'Congratulations, Captain Henke,' she said. 'We'll miss you. But on behalf of Nike's officers and crew, I wish you Godspeed and good hunting.'

'Thank you, Commander.' Henke's contralto was huskier than usual, and she swallowed again. 'You've got a good ship and good people, Eve. Take care of them. And—' she managed a smile '—try to keep the Skipper out of trouble.'

'I will, Ma'am.' Chandler saluted once more, then stepped back, and bosun's pipes twittered in formal salute to a departing starship's commander. Henke gripped Honor's hand once more, hard, and stepped into the tube without another backward glance.

Pavel Young turned from the window as the soft chime sounded. He paused a moment to twitch his uniform straight, then pressed the admittance key and watched the door to his quarters open.

The Marine sentry in the hall beyond wasn't the symbol of respect she would have been aboard ship. She was Young's keeper, the formal symbol of his disgraced status, and her cool, impersonal expression shouted her own judgment upon him. His mouth tightened at the fresh reminder, and his seething anger and humiliation surged up stronger than ever as the counter-grav life-support chair hummed past her into his sitting room.

The man in the chair was barely ninety T-years old, not even early middle age in a society with prolong, but his color was bad and he filled the chair in a billow of obesity that always made Young more aware than he liked of his own thickening middle. There were limits to how much even modern medicine could limit the consequences of a lifetime's catastrophic self-indulgence.

The chair purred into the center of the room, and the Tenth Earl of North Hollow leaned back in it to regard his eldest son from fat-pouched eyes.

'So,' he wheezed. 'Put your foot in it this time, didn't you?'

'I acted as I felt best under the circumstances, Father,' Young said stiffly, and the earl's snort sent a ripple through his mountainous girth.

'Save it for the court, boy! You fucked up—don't try to pretend you didn't. Not with me. Especially not'—his piggy little eyes hardened—'if you expect me to get you out of this with your hide!'

Young swallowed hard. He'd thought he was already as frightened as he could get; the suggestion that this time his father might not be able to save him proved he hadn't been.

'Better.' The earl moved his chair over to the window and glanced out, then pivoted back to face his son. 'I can't believe you were stupid enough to fuck up this way with that bitch in charge,' he grunted. Like Young himself, he seldom used Honor Harrington's name, but Young flushed under the scathing contempt in his voice, for this time it wasn't aimed at her. 'Damn, boy! Hasn't she made enough problems for you without this?' The earl waved a slablike hand at the closed, guarded door. 'What the hell were you using for brains?!'

Young bit his lip, and fresh anger burned like sick fire. What did his father know about it? He hadn't seen his ship at the middle of a missile storm!

'Twelve minutes. That's what made the difference,' that high, wheezy voice went on. 'All you had to do was stick it out for twelve more minutes, and none of this would've happened!'

'I made the best decision I could, Sir,' Young said, and knew it was a lie. He could feel the terrible echoes of unthinking, paralyzing panic even now.

'Bullshit. You ran for it.' Young flushed crimson, but the earl ignored it and continued, as if speaking to himself. 'Should never've sent you into the Navy in the first place. Suppose I always knew you didn't have the stomach for it.'

Young stared at him, unable to speak, and North Hollow sighed.

'Well, that's all air out the lock, now.' He seemed to realize his son was still stiffly at attention and jabbed a sausage-shaped finger at a chair. 'Oh, sit down, boy. Sit down!' Young obeyed with machinelike rigidity, and his father sighed again. 'I know I wasn't there, Pavel,' he said more gently. 'And I know things like this happen. The important thing now is how we get you out of it. I've got a few irons already in the fire, but before I can do anything effective I've got to know exactly what happened. Not just the official record—what you were thinking. Really thinking,' he added with a sharp, piercing look. 'Don't bullshit me now, boy. There's too much at stake.'

'I realize that, Father,' Young said in a low voice.

'Good.' The earl reached out to pat his knee and settled his chair to the carpet. 'Then suppose you start with everything you can remember. Save the justifications for the court and just tell me what happened.'

Admiral of the Green Hamish Alexander, Thirteenth Earl of White Haven, stared at his younger brother and heir across the snowy white tablecloth while their grim-faced host, Admiral Sir James Bowie Webster, Commander in Chief Home Fleet, watched them both.

'I can't believe this,' White Haven said at last. His own flagship had been back in Manticore orbit for less than an hour when Webster 'invited' him aboard HMS Manticore for supper. Now he shook his head like a man in a bad dream. 'I knew things were screwed up, but Caparelli's dispatches never suggested it was this bad!'

'We didn't know how bad it was going to get when he sent you your last download and ordered you home, Hamish.' William Alexander shrugged almost apologetically. 'We knew we'd lost Wallace and his cronies, but we didn't know the Conservative Association was going to sign on with the Opposition, too.'

'Damn it, Willie, we've got to hit the Peeps now! They're falling apart before our eyes—they didn't even fire a shot when I moved on Chelsea!—but if they get their feet back under them...' The earl let his voice trail off, and his brother shrugged.

'You're preaching to the converted, Hamish. The Duke's calling in every favor from the last fifty years, but the Opposition's standing firm for now. I think the Liberals have truly convinced themselves they're looking at a genuine reform movement on Haven. As for the Progressives—! I doubt Gray Hill and Lady Descroix would recognize a principle if it bit them, but they've persuaded the Progressive rank and file that the Peeps will simply self-destruct if we just let them alone.'

'That's horseshit, Willie!' Webster put down his cup so angrily coffee slopped over the brim. 'Goddamn it, don't any of them read history?!'

'No, they don't.' William's own anger was apparent in his over-controlled voice. 'It's not 'relevant.''

'Idiots!' White Haven grunted. He shoved himself up out of his chair and took a quick, frustrated turn around Webster's dining cabin. 'This is a classic situation. The Havenite government's been a disaster in waiting for decades, but this new Committee of Public Safety is a whole 'nother animal. I don't care what their propaganda says, they're no more reformers than the Conservative Association is, and they're ruthless as hell. Your own sources report they've already shot over a dozen admirals! If we don't smash them before they finish consolidating, we're going to be up against something ten times as dangerous as Harris and his stooges ever were.'

'At least they may shoot enough of their commanders to give us an edge.' William sounded like a man