Flag In Exile

she was unfit to discharge, and the consequences of her failure stood stark and plain in her mind. She'd actually thought she could be a steadholder, make a difference, play a part on a stage too great for her pitiful capabilities, and this was the result. Death and destruction, the collapse of an effort to bring an entire world into the present out of the past. And now she couldn't even do the one job she'd always believed she could and had to rely on people who had the right to expect, demand, leadership from her to hide the utter totality of her failure from anyone outside the squadron.

She raised her dull, almond eyes to Nimitz. The cat was huddled on his perch above her desk, watching over her, and his own eyes were dark. He was afraid, she thought. Afraid. She'd failed even Nimitz, for he could no more hide his emotions from her than she could hide hers from him, and for the first time in all their years together, he feared his link to her.

He made a soft sound, trying to disagree with her, his unflawed love battling against his fear, but she knew, just as he did, and the two of them mourned the ruin of all they'd been to one another as they mourned those crushed child bodies in Mueller Steading.

He made another soft sound and dropped from his perch. He crossed her desk and stretched out from its edge, putting his true-hands on her shoulders and rubbing his muzzle against her cheek, and tears burned behind her eyes as he begged her to relinquish the self-hate which was destroying them both. But she couldn't. She deserved her destruction, and knowing how terribly it hurt him only made her hate herself still more.

She took him in her arms, burying her face in his fur, and tried to use physical caresses as a substitute for the emotional ones she could no longer give him. He purred to her, pressing back against her, promising her his love... and under the love the bitter taste of fear still burned. The courage with which he exposed himself to her pain was a dagger, twisting within her, and she felt her tears soak into his fur like the acid of self-loathing.

She didn't know how long they huddled together, each trying uselessly to comfort the other, but finally the soft chime of the admittance signal broke in upon them. She tensed, muscles tightening to reject the summons, but she couldn't do that, either. She still had to pretend, she thought wearily. She was trapped, compelled to assume the mask of someone who could do the jobs she'd failed at, and she drew a deep, ragged breath, then pressed a kiss between Nimitz's ears and stood. She set him gently back on his perch and scrubbed away her tears, and his soft, loving croon as she turned away from the desk tore at her heart.

She pressed the admittance stud without even checking to see who it was. It didn't matter, anyway.

The hatch opened, and Andrew LaFollet stepped through it. She saw his face, the concern and trust, and fear, that echoed Nimitz's, however hard he tried to hide them, and her mouth moved in a parody of a smile. But then she saw Adam Gerrick behind her armsman, and her stomach knotted. Please, she thought.

Oh, please, God! Not more disaster. I can't survive any more guilt.

'Andrew.' Her own voice startled her, for she hadn't ordered it to speak, but it carried on without her, another rote automaton pretending the person it belonged to still functioned.

'My Lady,' LaFollet said quietly, and stepped out of Gerrick’s way.

'Adam,' her voice said.

'My Lady.' The engineer looked dreadful, she thought distantly, as if he hadn't slept since it happened. Yet even as she thought that, another equally distant part of her realized something had changed. The last time they'd spoken over the com, Adam Gerrick's self-hatred had been the mirror of her own, but there was something different now. The hate was still there, but it was hotter. It no longer burned like slow acid, and its fiery heat reached out to her as if from the door of an opened furnace.

'What can I do for you, Adam?' she asked listlessly, and his answer stunned her.

'You can listen to me, My Lady,' he said grimly, 'and then you can help me find the murdering bastards who sabotaged the Mueller dome.'

It was the first time he'd ever used even the mildest profanity in her presence. That was her first thought, but it barely had time to register before she jerked as if she'd been slapped.

'Sabotaged?' she repeated, and her suddenly taut soprano voice was hoarse, no longer numb.

'Sabotaged.' The engineer's reply was a thing of cold iron, as quenched in certainty as in outrage, and Honor swayed. LaFollet stepped quickly forward as she put out a hand, gripping her desk for support, but she didn't even notice. Her eyes were locked on Gerrick's face, begging him to be right, to know what he was talking about, and his short, savage nod answered her plea.

She dropped into her chair, distantly ashamed of her weakness, but things were shifting and roaring in her head. Vast, terrible weights plunged through the dark spaces of her mind, crashing into one another in showers of white-hot splinters, and she drew a deep, strangled breath.

'Are... are you sure, Adam?' she whispered. 'It was deliberate?'

'It was, My Lady. Stu Matthews spotted it four hours ago.'

'Four hours?' she repeated. 'You... you've known for four hours?' Her voice broke, and shame flashed across Gerrick's expression.

'Yes, My Lady. Forgive me. I should have commed you and told you then, but I wanted to be sure, to be positive, before I brought it to you.' His nostrils flared and he tossed his head. 'Now I am ... and so are Lord Clinkscales, Planetary Security, and Protector Benjamin.'

'My God,' Honor whispered. She heard the soft thud of Nimitz's weight on the desk behind her, felt his arms go about her neck from behind, and her eyes clung to Gerrick like her last, faint hope of salvation.

'Oh, my God!' she whispered again, and this time it was a cry from the heart, ragged with the agony she'd tried to hide for so long. She buried her face in her hands, rocking in her chair, and her entire body jerked with the force of her sobs.

'My Lady!' LaFollet cried. She felt him there, on his knees beside her, his hands on her forearms. He pulled with gentle strength, forcing her hands' down, making her stare at him through her tears, and his voice was deep and soft. 'It wasn't us, My Lady,' he told her. 'It wasn't an accident, wasn't carelessness. My Lady, it wasn't your fault.'

She stared at him, ashamed of her weakness, grateful for his comfort, and he smiled at her. He smiled, without a trace of contempt for her broken reaction, and she twisted her forearms in his grip, sliding them down to clasp his hands and squeeze them tightly before she looked back at Gerrick.

'How, Adam?' she asked, and her voice was almost her own again. 'How did they do it? And how did you find out?'

'How we found out is a long story, My Lady. The short version of it is that we've been modeling and analyzing the collapse ever since it happened, and we finally realized there was a pattern. We...'

He paused suddenly, then shook his head like an annoyed horse and gave her a weary, lopsided smile.

'My Lady, would you mind if I sit? I'm afraid I'm a little tired.'

'Of course,' she said quickly, and he sank into a facing chair. 'I'll buzz Mac,' she went on, knowing she sounded inane but unable to think of anything else to say. 'We need...'

'My Lady,' LaFollet's gentle voice summoned her eyes back to him, and he smiled again. 'I already told him, My Lady, and he asked me to tell you he'd be here as soon as he found the... Delacourt, I think he said.' 'The...?' Honor blinked at her armsman, for the first time truly realizing how exhausted and drained she was, and then she laughed softly. 'The Delacourt,' she repeated with a crooked smile of her own. 'Mac always has had a nice sense of the appropriate.'

'Indeed he has, and...'

LaFollet broke off as the dining cabin hatch opened and MacGuiness stepped through it. The steward carried a silver tray with three tall-stemmed glasses and a bottle from her father's personal cellars on Manticore, and the smile he gave wrenched at her heart. He carried the tray to her desk and set it down, and she blinked misty eyes as she saw the small bowl of celery he'd taken time to prepare for Nimitz.

'I thought you might want this, Ma'am,' he said quietly as he poured ruby wine into a glass. He handed it to her, then filled two more glasses and handed them to LaFollet and Gerrick before he stood back, still holding the bottle, and she reached out and touched his hand. 'Thank you, Mac,' she said softly. 'You always seem to know,