In Enemy Hands

especially if the Peeps had, indeed, used missile pods.

'How bad were Commodore Yeargin's losses?' she asked after a moment.

'Ma'am, I...' Dorcett stopped and swallowed. 'I'm sorry, Admiral. I must have been... unclear.' She inhaled, then went on very flatly. 'Aside from my division, the task group’s losses were total, Dame Madeleine. I'm... the senior surviving officer.'

Sorbanne didn't say a word. She only sat there for endless, aching seconds, staring at Dorcett while her mind raced. The news that the Peeps had finally deployed missile pods was unwelcome and frightening, but hardly unexpected. Every thinking officer had known the enemy had to be working at full stretch to overcome the huge advantage the Allies' pod monopoly had conferred upon them. But having the long-awaited weapons employed so competently and to such crushing effect by the despised Peeps... that was unexpected. And the moral shock was far more than merely frightening.

Madeleine Sorbanne leaned slowly back in her chair once more, still staring at Dorcett, but she wasn't really seeing the commander. She was seeing another woman's face and thinking about Frances Yeargin and her command. Yeargin always was an arrogant, overconfident bitch, she thought slowly, remembering the dead commodore and her oft expressed contempt for the People's Navy. Damn it, she knew she was short of platforms! The woman should have had at least some pickets out, for God's sake! What the hell did she think she was stationed there for?

But what Yeargin had been thinking was immaterial now. Rightly or wrongly, the future was going to condemn her even more harshly than Sorbanne did now, for never in its entire history, had the RMN suffered a disaster like this... until now. An entire generation of analysts would examine every tiny facet of the Battle of Adler, apportioning blame and assigning guilt with twenty-twenty hindsight and the fine ruthlessness of people who'd never been there, and that was just as immaterial right now as what Yeargin had been thinking. What mattered was that her entire command was gone, wiped out. Blotted away. And if the Peeps had used missile pods with the advantages of surprise and short range, casualties must have been massive, for no one would have been suited up and very few people would have gotten off in life pods before their ships died.

Pain twisted deep inside her at the thought of all the dead, but then another thought hit her, and her eyes dropped back into intent focus.

'If you're the surviving SO, then who's picketing the system, Commander?'

'No one, Ma'am. I only had three ships: Windsong, Rondeau, and Balladeer. Under the circumstances, I judged that my immediate duty was to use all three of them to spread the word as quickly as possible, so I brought Windsong here and sent the other two to Quest and Treadway.'

'I see.' Something in the vice admirals almost mechanical reply gripped Dorcett's attention by the throat, and her hands clenched behind her. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but she knew she'd failed when Sorbanne shook her head.

'It's not your fault, Commander.' She sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of her nose hard. 'You reasoned that your command would be best employed in alerting other station commanders before more ships were dispatched to Adler than in dodging around the system trying to avoid Peep pursuers, correct?' She lowered her hand, gazing at Dorcett, and the commander nodded. 'That was the proper and logical judgment, and my report to the Admiralty will endorse it as such. But you're too late.'

'Too late, Ma'am?' Cold, intuitive despair burned in Dorcett's belly even as she repeated the admiral's words, and Sorbanne nodded.

'Seventeen merchantmen and their escorts sailed from Clairmont just over five days ago, Commander Dorcett. They should arrive in Adler within the next twelve hours, and with no pickets to warn them...'

She shrugged, and Jessica Dorcett closed her eyes in horrified understanding... and guilt.

Alistair McKeon sat at the head of his dining cabin table and watched his guests. They'd pretty much come to the end of their comfortable, tasty dinner; now they were working on the last few morsels while they engaged in a dozen separate conversations and sampled their wine, and McKeon allowed himself the mild, self-congratulatory glow a successful host deserved.

Honor sat to his right, as his guest of honor, and Commander Taylor Gillespie, Prince Adrian’s executive officer, faced her across the table. Lieutenant Commander Geraldine Metcalf, McKeon’s tactical officer, sat to Gillespie's right, facing Nimitz, and Honors officers and Surgeon Lieutenant Enrico Walker, Prince Adrian's doctor, occupied the rest of the chairs around the table. James Candless shared the watch outside the hatch to McKeon’s quarters with the Marine sentry while Andrew LaFollet and Robert Whitman stood against the bulkheads, courteously unobtrusive but nonetheless an alert reminder that CruRon Eighteen's commodore was also a great feudal lady.

Some RMN officers, McKeon knew, would have found Honors title and status either ridiculous or irritating. A certain percentage of Manticorans, mostly civilians, but including a number of Queen’s officers who should know better, had never bothered to amend their mental images of the Yeltsin System. They still looked down on Grayson (and its navy) as some sort of comic opera, technically backward vest-pocket principality of religious fanatics with delusions of grandeur, and their contempt extended itself to the planet's aristocratic titles and those who held them. And however much most of the RMNs officers might respect Honors achievements, there would always be those souls who would denigrate her reputation, whether out of jealousy, resentment, or the genuine belief that she owed it all to luck.

God knows there're enough idiots like Jurgens and Lemaitre, he reflected. They actually buy the theory that she's some sort of loose warhead, that her casualties and the ships she's lost or had damaged only happened because she was too reckless to think before she went charging in! The fact that no other skipper could have brought anyone home doesn't mean squat to them. And, of course, there are always the Housemans and the Youngs. It doesn't matter what she accomplishes as far as they're concerned. He reached for his own wineglass as he watched Honor turn her head to address Walker across Nimitz, and hid a mental smile. Well, screw them. We know how good she is, and so does the Admiralty.

Honor paused in her conversation with Walker, as if she felt McKeon’s eyes upon her. She turned to smile at him, and he made a small, semisaluting gesture with his glass. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then hesitated, eyes refocusing as she gazed over his shoulder. McKeon looked a question at her, but she said nothing, so he half-turned in his chair to look in the same direction and felt his eyebrows arch in surprise.

Alex Maybach, McKeon’s personal steward, hovered over two junior stewards as they wheeled an enormous confectionery monstrosity through the pantry hatch. The cake was at least a meter long, baked in a stylized shape obviously intended to represent Prince Adrian, and blazed from end to end with burning candles, and a corner of his surprised brain wondered how Maybach could possibly have kept the thing hidden from him.

He was still wondering when someone gave the signal and the entire dining cabin burst into what a particularly charitable observer might have called singing. McKeon wheeled back to his guests, trying to glare while those of them with sufficient seniority grinned like loons and those too junior for such levity did their best to maintain straight faces, and Nimitz's clear 'Bleek!' of delight cut through the chorus.

'...birrrthday to yoouuu!'

The song came to a merciful close in a burst of applause, and McKeon shook his head at Honor.

'How did you manage it?' he demanded under cover of the general hilarity. It never occurred to him to doubt that she was behind it. His own officers might have been willing to ambush him in the wardroom, but none of them would have had the nerve to try the same thing in his own quarters. Yet not even she could have planned this without using the com to arrange things, for until the scrubber unit failed, she'd had no way to know she would be aboard at the proper time. So how had she kept him from realizing that she was in communication with his people while she set it up?

'You remember that long parts list and technical data file Commander Sinkowitz downloaded to your Engineering Department?' she asked with a lurking smile, and he nodded. 'Well, I got him to hide a personal message to Commander Palliser in it, and Palliser relayed it to Alex. Surely you didn't think we were going to let you