Honor Among Enemies

merchantmen were unlikely to make much difference in the grand scale of things, but it was just possible they would, and they were far more likely to do so with someone like Harrington in command.

Of course, as he'd been at some pains to point out to Houseman, it was even more likely that she'd get herself killed before she could accomplish anything. That would be a pity, but there was at least a chance that she'd do some good.

And the bottom line, he told himself as he handed his glass to the barkeep with a smile, was that whether she managed to stop the pirates or the pirates managed to kill her, he still came out ahead.

Chapter THREE

Any semiautomatic pistol was a technological antique, but this one was more so than most. In point of fact, its design was over two thousand T-years old, for it was an exact replica of what had once been known as a 'Model 1911A1' firing a '.45 ACP' cartridge. It was quite a handful, with an unloaded weight of just under 1.3 kilograms in Grayson's 1.17 standard gravities, and the recoil was formidable. Its antiquity didn't make it any less noisy, either, and despite their ear protectors, more than one of the armsmen on the neighboring firing lanes winced as the 11.43-millimeter slug rumbled down range at a mere 275 MPS. That was a paltry velocity, even beside the auto-loaders to which the Grayson tech base had been limited before the Yeltsin System joined the Alliance, much less the 2,000-plus MPS at which a modern pulser punched out its darts, but the massive fifteen-gram bullet still reached the end of its fifteen-meter journey with formidable kinetic energy. The jacketed slug exploded through the equally anachronistic paper target's 'X' ring in a shower of small white fragments, then vanished in a fiery flash as it plowed into the focused grav wall 'backstop' and vaporized.

The deep, rolling Boom! of the archaic handgun cut through the high-pitched whine of the pulsers again, then a third time, a fourth. Seven echoing shots thundered with precise, elegant timing, and the center of the target disappeared, replaced by a single gaping hole.

Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Countess and Steadholder Harrington, lowered the pistol from her preferred two-hand shooting stance, checked to be certain the slide had locked open on an empty magazine, and laid the weapon on the counter in front of her before taking off her shooting glasses and acoustic earmuffs. Major Andrew LaFollet, her personal armsman and chief bodyguard, stood behind her, wearing his own eye and ear protection, and shook his head as she pressed a button and the target hummed back towards her. Lady Harrington's hand cannon had been a gift from High Admiral Wesley Matthews, and LaFollet wondered how the GSN’s military commander-in-chief had discovered she would like such an outre present. However he'd figured it out, he'd certainly been right. Lady Harrington took the noisy, propellant-spewing, eardrum-shattering monster to the range, whether aboard her super-dreadnought flagship or here at the Harrington Guards outdoor small arms range, at least once a week, and she seemed to draw almost as much pleasure from the ritual of cleaning it after each firing session as she did from battering everyone else's ears with the thing.

She took the target down and put her pocket rule on it, measuring the three-centimeter group with evident satisfaction. Despite his own reservations about the thunderous archaic weapon, LaFollet found her accuracy with it both impressive and reassuring. Anyone who'd seen her on the Landing City dueling grounds knew she hit what she shot at, but as the man charged with keeping her alive, he was always glad to see her demonstrate her ability to look after herself.

He snorted in wry amusement at the thought. She hardly looked it, standing there like a slim green-and- white flame in her ankle-length gown and hip-length vest, silky brown hair falling loose over her shoulders, but she was probably the most dangerous person on the range... including Andrew LaFollet. She continued to work out regularly with her armsmen, and though they'd improved markedly in their own mastery of her favored coup de vitesse, she still threw them around the mat with absurd ease.

Of course, at just over a hundred and ninety centimeters she was taller than any of them, and her birth worlds gravity well, almost fifteen percent deeper than Graysons, had given her impressive strength and reflexes. She might be slim, but that sinewy slimness was all firm, hard-trained muscle. Yet that wasn't the real reason she made it seem so easy. The real reason was that although the third-generation prolong treatments she'd received as a child might make her look like someone's barely postadolescent sister, she was actually thirteen T-years older than LaFollet himself, and she'd spent over thirty-six years training in the coup. That meant she'd been practicing for as long as LaFollet had been alive, though even he sometimes had trouble believing that was possible when he looked at her youthful, exotically beautiful face.

She finished examining the target and drew a stylus from her pocket to note the date on it, then placed it with a dozen other perforated sheets of paper and slipped the handgun into its carrying case. She put both extra magazines in with it and sealed the case, tucked it under her arm, slid her shooting glasses into a pocket, and gathered up her ear protectors, and the almond eyes she'd inherited from her Chinese mother twinkled as LaFollet tried not to sigh in relief.

'All done, Andrew,' she said, and the two of them walked away from the range towards Harrington House's rear entrance. A sleek, six-limbed, cream-and-gray Sphinx treecat rose from his peaceful repose in a patch of sunlight, stretched lazily, and padded to meet them as LaFollet pulled off his earmuffs, and she laughed.

'Nimitz seems to share your opinion of the noise level,' she observed, bending to scoop the 'cat up. He bleeked a cheerful agreement with her comment, and she laughed again as she set him on her shoulder. He took his normal position, mid-limbs' hand-paws sinking centimeter-long claws into her vest's shoulder while his true-feet dug in just below her shoulder blade, and flirted his fluffy tail as LaFollet smiled back at her.

'It's not just the noise, My Lady. It's the energy level. That's a brute-force weapon if I ever saw one.'

'True, but it's more fun than a pulser, too,' Honor replied. 'I'd prefer something more modern in a fight myself, to be perfectly honest, but it does speak with authority, doesn't it?'

'I can't argue with you there, My Lady,' LaFollet admitted, eyes sweeping their surroundings in the automatic threat search of his calling even here, on Harrington House's immaculate grounds. 'And I'm not so sure it would be all that useless in a fight, either. If nothing else, the sheer racket ought to give you the advantage of surprise.'

'You're probably right,' she agreed. The artificial nerves in the rebuilt left side of her face pulled her smile just a bit off center, but her eyes danced. 'Maybe I should take away the Guard's pulsers and see if the High Admiral can't get me enough for all of you, too.'

'Thank you, My Lady, but I'm quite satisfied with my pulser,' LaFollet replied with exquisite politeness. 'I carried a chemical-burner of my own, if not one quite that, ah, formidable, for ten years before you upgraded us. Now I'm spoiled.'

'Don't say I never offered,' she teased, and nodded to the sentry who opened Harrington House's back door for them.

'I won't,' LaFollet assured her as the closing door cut off the sounds from the range behind them. 'You know, My Lady, there's something I've wanted to ask you,' he added. She quirked an eyebrow and nodded for him to go on. 'Back on Manticore, before your duel with Summervale, Colonel Ramirez was a lot more nervous than he tried to show. I told him I'd seen you practicing and that you were no slouch with a handgun, but I've always wondered just how you got so good with one myself.'

'I grew up on Sphinx,' Honor replied, and it was his turn to crook an eyebrow. 'Sphinx has been settled for almost six hundred T-years,' she explained, 'but a third of the planet's still Crown land, which means virgin wilderness, and the Harrington homestead backs smack up to the Copper Wall Nature Preserve. Lots of things on Sphinx wouldn't mind finding out how people taste, and most adults and older children pack guns in the Outback as a matter of course.'

'But not antiques like that one, I'll bet,' LaFollet returned, gesturing at the pistol case under her left arm.

'No,' she admitted. 'That's my Uncle Jacques' fault.'

'Uncle Jacques?'

'My mom's older brother. He came out from Beowulf to visit us for about a year when I was, oh, twelve T-