Honor Among Enemies

'I'd prefer for you to think of yourselves as our guests,' Harrington said with a small, answering smile, and he nodded.

'I can live with that,' he said, and offered her his hand. She shook it firmly, and the skinsuited, six-limbed creature on her shoulder nodded gravely to him. Holtz amazed himself by nodding back, then waved at his small party of survivors. 'And now, perhaps Citizen Commander Wicklow should get with your environmental techs, Captain,' he said quietly.

'We've got the backups on-line down in Environmental, Ma'am,' an exhausted Ginger Lewis reported from DCC three hours later. 'Commander Wicklow’s been a big help, and I think he's found a way to beat the temperature loss when we put in the ducting to the scrubber.'

'Good, Ginger. Good. And my quarters?'

'We can't get pressure in there, Ma'am, there's just too much bulkhead damage. But the Bosun thinks she's found a way to get the module out.'

'She has?' Honor was relieved to hear it. Samantha's module was intact, but the bulkhead niche in which it was mounted had deformed badly, locking it in place. Samantha couldn't survive outside it, yet there'd seemed to be no way to get it out of Honor's day cabin.

'Yes, Ma'am.' Sally MacBride's voice came onto the circuit. 'There's a serviceway behind the bulkhead. I can put in a crew with a torch and cut the entire bulkhead out, then take the module out through the serviceway. It'll be tight, but we can do it.'

'Thank you, Sally,' Honor sighed. 'Thank you very much. Can we spare anyone for it?'

'Yes, Ma'am. After all,' Honor heard the bosun's weary smile, 'she's the only crewman still trapped. I've got your Candless with me; he and I can handle it ourselves.'

'Thank you,' Honor said again. 'And thank Jamie for me, please.'

'I will, Ma'am,' MacBride assured her, and Honor looked up as Rafe Cardones paused beside her again.

'I think we've got the immediate situation under control, Skipper.'

'Good. In that case, let's start getting the people fed.' Honor waved at the tables, where volunteers had managed to assemble huge plates of sandwiches out of the mess compartments galley supplies. 'We're going to have enough trouble from fatigue without adding mistakes induced by hunger and low blood sugar.'

'Agreed. And it should help morale some, too. God knows I could eat a kodiak max!'

'Me, too,' Honor said with a smile. 'And once...'

'Skipper! Skipper!'

Honor jerked, jumping half out of her skin as the urgent voice blurted from her skinsuit com. It was Scotty Tremaine, mounting sensor watch in his pinnace with Horace Harkness, and she'd never heard such urgency in his voice.

'Yes, Scotty?'

'Skipper, I've got the most beautiful sight in the goddamned universe out here!' Scotty half-shouted, swearing in her hearing for the first time in her memory. 'It's gorgeous, Skipper'

'What's'gorgeous'?' she demanded.

'Here, Skipper! Let me relay to you,' he said instead of answering directly. Honor looked at Cardones in bafflement, and then another voice came over her suit com.

'Wayfarer, this is Harold Sukowski, approaching from your zero-two-five, three- one-niner,' it said. 'I am aboard LAC Andrew with your Lieutenant Commander Hunter, with John, Paul, Thomas, and three shuttles in company. James and Thaddeus are keeping an eye on Artemis, but we thought you might like a ride home.'

Chapter FORTY-TWO

Citizen Commander Warner Caslet and his officers followed the Manticoran Marine down the hall. A familiar man in a green uniform gave them a quick once over, then knocked on the frame of the opened door at the corridors end.

'Citizen Commander Caslet and his officers, My Lady,' Simon Mattingly said, and a clear soprano replied from the room beyond.

'Send them in, please,' it said, and Mattingly smiled and waved the Republican officers on. Somewhat to Caslet’s surprise, the Marine peeled off at the door, and Mattingly closed it quietly behind them, leaving them alone with Honor Harrington and Andrew LaFollet.

Well, not quite alone. Two treecats sat on the back of her chair, the smaller, dapple-coated female pressed tight against the back of her neck while her mate hovered protectively. Caslet knew what had happened to Samantha's person, and he saw her loss in her body language, but he also sensed the loving support flowing to her from Nimitz and his person.

'Please, be seated,' Honor invited, waving to the chairs before her desk. The half-dozen Peeps sat at her gesture, and MacGuiness appeared to pour each of them a glass of wine.

Honor leaned back to gaze at them, and Samantha slipped down from the chair back to huddle in her lap. Honor gathered the 'cat in her arms, hugging her as she would have hugged Nimitz, and felt Nimitz channeling her own support to Samantha. But even as she held the grieving treecat, her mind was flickering back over the last month's hectic events.

She hadn't been able to believe it when Sukowski turned up. For all the brave front she'd projected, she'd known, not thought; known, they were all going to die. Changing her mind had been hard, even with the proof right in front of her, and then her elated relief had been replaced by a deep, terrible anger that Sukowski and Fuchien and her own detached LAC skippers could have run such an insane risk after Wayfarer had paid such a terrible price to buy Artemis' escape.

She'd known at the time that her fury was born of her own whipsawed emotions, but the knowledge hadn't been enough to keep her from feeling it, and the haste with which Sukowski and Lieutenant Commander Hunter had begun explaining that they weren't really running a risk would have been hilarious had she been even one or two centimeters closer to rational.

And, in fact, they had been careful. Artemis had dropped the LACs and her shuttles and then translated very cautiously down to the alpha bands without using her impellers at all, possible for such a slow translation, though only the best ship handler and engineer could have pulled it off, and hidden in the lower bands while Sukowski led the search mission towards Wayfarer's last known position. The LACs' sensors were inferior to those of a battlecruiser, but their impeller signatures were far weaker, as well; they would have seen any Peep long before the Peep could detect them in return, and all of them had been prepared to shut their own wedges down instantly.

It was Sukowski who'd plotted their search pattern, and he'd done a good job. But they would probably have missed Wayfarers inert hulk if Scotty Tremaine and Horace Harkness hadn't picked them up on passive and guided them in, and Honor still woke shivering when she considered the odds against their success. Yet they'd done it. Somehow, they'd done it, and the four LACs and three long-range shuttles had lifted every surviving crewman, Manticoran and Peep alike, off Wayfarer.

The chance that anyone would stumble across her before she blundered into a grav wave and broke up was less than minute, but Honor had made sure no one would. She'd set the nuclear demolition charge herself, with a twelve-hour delay, before she went aboard Andrew with Sukowski and Hunter.

Space had been tight enough she'd ordered all baggage abandoned, but MacGuiness and her surviving armsmen had somehow smuggled the Harrington Sword and Key, her .45, and the golden plaque commemorating her record-setting sailplane flight at the Academy aboard Andrew. She'd picked up her