Flag In Exile

least ten meters on a side, stupendous for any warship, and the sleeping cabin, just visible through an open hatch, was on the same lavish scale. She waded across the thick, rich carpet of GSN-blue to open a closed hatch and shook her head again as she found a dining cabin large enough to host a state dinner. The original Havenite fittings had been stripped during refit, but the Grayson Navy had refurnished in palatial style, and she pursed her lips as she examined her enormous desk and discovered it was made of natural wood.

'I could get to like this,' she announced finally, 'but we need to have Nimitz's module gold-plated, Mac. It looks positively plebeian against all this magnificence.'

The cat made a soft, scolding sound on her shoulder and leapt to the top of his bulkhead-mounted life support module. He sat up and wrapped his tail around his true-feet, craning his head about while he, too, inspected their new quarters, and Honor grinned as he radiated smug satisfaction over their link.

'I believe Nimitz is satisfied the way things are, Ma'am,' MacGuiness remarked in a tone which indicated his own agreement with the cat.

'Nimitz,' Honor said severely, 'is a shameless hedonist.' She sank onto a comfortable couch and stretched her long legs luxuriously. 'Of course, he's not the only shameless hedonist in this cabin.'

'Indeed, Ma'am?' MacGuiness said blandly.

'Indeed.' Honor closed her eyes, then sat up. 'Why don't you go see what your own quarters are like, Mac? Captain Brigham and I have some catching up to do. No doubt she can show me where the buzzer is if I need you.'

'Of course, Ma'am.' The steward nodded respectfully to the chief of staff and excused himself, and Honor pointed to a chair that faced her couch.

'Sit down, Mercedes,' she invited. The older woman accepted with a small smile, crossing her legs and placing her cap in her lap, and Honor studied her from under slightly lowered lids.

Mercedes Brigham was a native of Gryphon. She was also a second-generation prolong recipient and old enough to be Honor's mother, which meant her black hair was stranded with white, and, despite over half a century in space, her dark skin still wore the weathered look of her birth worlds climate. She'd never been beautiful, but her comfortable, lived-in face was attractive. They'd first met six T-years ago, when Mercedes had been Honor's sailing master in the light cruiser Fearless. Despite her long career, she'd been only a lieutenant at the time, and, after so many years in grade, she'd accepted that she would never attain command rank. Now she sat facing Honor in her captain's uniform, and she was still the same quietly competent, confident officer she'd always been.

And that, Honor thought silently, was truly remarkable, given what had happened to Madrigal's crew on Blackbird.

'Well,' she said at last, 'I'm delighted to see you again, Mercedes. And, needless to say, I'm also delighted you've finally gotten the rank you always deserved.'

'Thank you, Ma'am. I'm still getting used to it myself.' Mercedes looked down at the narrower four gold rings on her sleeve. 'The Graysons bumped me when the Fleet made me a 'leaner,' but the Admiralty made me a full commander when they let me out of Bassingford. I'm not sure they expected me to keep it, though.' She grimaced. 'I think BuPers expected it to be my separation rank.'

'Oh?' Honor asked in a carefully neutral voice.

'Yes, Ma'am. My counselor advised me to consider retirement, with full pension, of course. I'm afraid I, ah, told her where to stick her advice.'

Honors mouth twitched. 'I doubt she took that very well.'

'I see you've had your own run-ins with the shrinks, Ma'am,' Mercedes observed, then waved one hand. 'Oh, she meant well, and I really am grateful for the way they put me back together, but I don't think they realize how good a job they did. Their own tests passed me fit for duty, and they still figured I should 'take it easy' getting back into harness!'

'I imagine part of it's the nature of what happened to you,' Honor said quietly.

'I'm not the first person who was ever raped, Ma'am.'

Honor was silent for a moment. What had happened to Mercedes Brigham was far too brutal to dismiss with a single word, even one as ugly as 'rape,' and still worse had happened to other members of Madrigal's crew. Mercedes' crew. People she was responsible for. Honor knew from bitter experience the terrible guilt an officer felt when she lost her people in combat. How much more terrible must it be to lose them to sadistic, systematic torture?

Yet she detected no evasion or denial in Mercedes’ tone. The older woman wasn't trying to pretend what she'd endured had been less hideous than it had. Her voice was simply that of someone who'd come to terms with it more completely than Honor suspected she could have, and she shook her head and made herself speak with a matching calm.

'I know you aren't, but I think the Navy feels a sort of institutional guilt. No one expected any of what happened, but the Admiralty knew when they sent us out that neither Masada nor Grayson had ever signed the Deneb Accords, and that they were both... a bit backward, shall we say? We all know how POWs can be abused, but it'd been a long time since anything like Blackbird happened to RMN personnel, and we let ourselves forget it might happen to us. It's going to be a while before the Fleet forgives itself for that.'

'I understand that, but having people who should know better try to wrap you up in cotton isn't exactly the best way to put you back on your feet, Ma'am. And there's a point where having someone explain over and over that it wasn't your fault makes you start wondering if they're telling you that so firmly because they think maybe it was. I know whose fault it was, and all of 'em are dead now, thanks to you, the Marines, and Grayson. I just wish everyone else would figure out I know and let it drop.' The captain shook her head. 'I know they mean well, but it can get mighty wearing. Still,' her eyes darkened, 'I suppose sometimes they have to tell you an awful lot of times before you start believing it.'

'Like Mai-ling,' Honor sighed, and Mercedes' face tightened.

'Like Mai-ling,' she agreed. She stared down at her cap for a long, silent moment, then inhaled. 'I'll be honest, Ma'am, I do have nightmares, but they're not really about me. They're about Mai-ling. About knowing what was happening to her at the same time when I couldn't do a damned thing to stop it.' She raised her eyes once more. 'Accepting that I couldn't have kept them off her was harder than accepting what happened to me. She was only a kid, and she couldn't believe anyone would do what those animals did to her. That's what I can't forgive, Ma'am, and the reason I'm out here.'

'Oh?' Honor said neutrally, and Mercedes smiled.

'I believe in the hair of the dog, Ma'am. That's why I volunteered for the Endicott occupation force. I wanted to watch the bastards who'd sent Captain Williams and his pigs to Blackbird squirm.'

'I see.' Honor leaned back, and the harshness of Mercedes' voice told her the real reason the psychs had worried about her. 'And did you?'

'Yes.' The captain looked back down at her cap, and the single word came out leached of all feeling. Then she sighed. 'Yes, I saw them squirm. And before you ask, Ma'am, I've already figured out why the shrinks didn't want me out here. They figured their tests might not have caught something and I'd lose it.' She looked back up at Honor, and there was a sort of strange whimsy in her grim smile.

'They might even have been right. There was one time...' She broke off and shrugged. 'Have you been to Masada since the occupation, Ma'am?'

'No.' Honor shook her head. 'I've considered it, but never very seriously. If there's one person in the galaxy those lunatics really hate, I'm her, and Andrew would shoot me himself, somewhere harmless, like an arm or a leg, to keep me out of their range.'

'That would be wise of him, Ma'am. You know, before I saw the place myself, I wondered why the Kingdom should have to shoulder the full burden of occupying it. I mean, we're stretched way too thin as it is, and Endicott's just a hop and a skip from Yeltsin, so why not let the Graysons supply the troops? But those people...' The chief of staff shook her head and rubbed her upper arms as if against a chill.

'Is it really that bad?' Honor asked quietly.

'Worse,' Mercedes said bleakly. 'Remember when we first came out here? How hard we found it to understand how Grayson women could accept their status?' Honor nodded, and Mercedes shrugged. 'Compared to Graysons, Masadan women are downright scary. They're not even people. They're