In Enemy Hands

get into range to engage her yet. The odds against it were long, but this character was going to keep coming with everything he had for as long as there was the smallest conceivable chance that it might do him some good, and that was a most un-Peep-like attitude.

McKeon drew his eyes from the plot and looked back at his commodore, and his lips tightened. He hesitated a moment, and then leaned close to her.

'Honor, will you please get out of here and into a rescue suit?' he demanded in a voice pitched too low for anyone else to hear but still harsh with concern.

She gazed at him with dark, chocolate-brown eyes, and he felt his teeth trying to grind together at her calm expression and quizzically arched eyebrow. She reached up to rub Nimitz’s ears, and the 'cat pressed against her fingers. McKeon needed no link to Nimitz to know the 'cat's deep, anxious purr urged Honor to take his advice, but she seemed as unmoved by Nimitz’s advice as by McKeon’s.

'I need to be here,' she said mildly, and McKeon inhaled sharply. Part of him wanted to grab her by the scruff of the neck, haul her physically off the bridge, and hand her over to his Marines with orders to stuff her into a suit for her own good. The fact that any such attempt on his part would end in a swift and humiliating fiasco made it no less attractive... only impractical. Even assuming LaFollet didn't take his head off for laying hands on Steadholder Harrington, Honor herself could tie him up in a bow anytime she felt like it, and they both knew it. But commodore and steadholder or not, he wanted her off his command deck before they entered Bandit One's range, because neither she nor any other human member of her party had brought their skinsuits with them when they came over from Alvarez.

Navy and Marine skinsuits weren't something which could be ordered off the rack. They had to be very carefully fitted to their wearers, indeed, 'fitted' was a barely adequate word, for in many respects they were custom built to suit the individual for whom they were intended. Other vacuum gear, like the heavy hardsuits that construction crews wore or the clumsy rescue suits which were part of any ship's lifesaving gear, could be worn by almost anyone but had limited utility. Hardsuits, for instance, were basically small, independent spacecraft designed for extended deep-space use or handling cargo in depressurized holds. They literally wouldn't fit into the internal spaces of a starship, and while rescue suits could be worn almost anywhere, they were little more than emergency environmental envelopes designed to be towed around by rescue crews.

In many respects, Honor and her party would have been better off aboard a civilian transport, for interstellar law required commercial ships to carry sufficient suits for all passengers. Sheer cost, not to mention the need for fitting time, made it impossible for liners to provide that many skinsuits, so passenger suits were a cross between a rescue suit and a skinsuit, almost a throwback to the clumsy suits of the early first-century Post Diaspora, though considerably less bulky. Even they would have been unsuitable for long- term wear, and their old-fashioned gloves lacked the miniaturized, biofeedback servomechs which made it possible for a skinsuited individual to thread a needle even in vacuum, but they were infinitely preferable to a rescue suit.

Unfortunately, Prince Adrian's equipment list didn't include any of them. Rescue suits were provided for those cases in which people were temporarily separated from their personal equipment, but the Navy assumed naval personnel normally would keep their issue skinsuits to hand. Under the letter of the regs, Honor and her people should have brought their suits with them, however inconvenient the extra baggage would have been, since they'd intended to be aboard Prince Adrian for over twelve hours, but that regulation was routinely ignored. And so it was that of her entire party, only Nimitz, whose special skinsuit fitted neatly into a custom-designed carryall, was properly equipped for a warship at battle stations.

'Look,' McKeon said now, still careful to keep his voice low, 'you're not the only one who's going to die if we lose pressure here.' He twitched his head at Venizelos and LaFollet, who were busy ignoring the conversation. 'They're not suited up, either.'

Something flickered in those dark brown eyes, and Honor turned to look at her subordinates. LaFollet seemed to feel her gaze, for he looked up and met it levelly, and her eyes flicked back to McKeon.

'You fight dirty,' she said softly, an edge of steel in her voice, and he shrugged.

'So sue me.'

She regarded him for several silent seconds, then cleared her throat.

'Andy, take Andrew and go below and join the others,' she said crisply.

Venizelos turned quickly, and his expression indicated both that he'd anticipated her order and that he didn't much like it.

'I assume you'll be joining us, Milady,' he said flatly. It wasn't a question, and Honors lips thinned.

'You may assume whatever you wish to assume, Commander. But you'll do your assuming in the boat bay gallery in a rescue suit.'

'With all due respect, Commodore Harrington, I believe my place is here,' Venizelos replied. Honor's eyes hardened and she started to speak harshly, then paused and visibly got a grip on her temper.

'I understand that, Andy,' she said much more quietly, 'but there's nothing at all you can do here, and there's no point in both of us being pigheaded.'

Despite the tension in the air, amusement flickered in Venizelos' eyes at the word 'both,' but he showed no sign of retreating.

'You're right there, Ma'am. That's why I feel you should join the rest of us in the boat bay.'

'I'm sure you do,' Honor replied evenly, 'but there is a difference between us, you know.' One of Venizelos' eyebrows arched, and she smiled with bleak humor. 'You're a commander, and I'm a commodore. That means I can order you to go.'

'I...' Venizelos began, but her raised hand cut him off in midbreath. It wasn't an arrogant gesture, or a dismissive one, yet its finality was impossible to disobey.

'I'm serious, Andy. Whatever Captain McKeon may believe, I need to be here. This ship is part of my squadron, and her current position is the result of my orders. But you don't need to be here, and you're going to the boat bay right now.'

Venizelos' mouth set rebelliously, and he darted a look past her to McKeon, as if appealing to Prince Adrian's CO for support. But McKeon only looked grimly at Honor's back, with the expression of a man who knew he'd lost the argument. The chief of staff hesitated a moment longer, but then his shoulders sagged and he nodded.

'Very well, Ma'am,' he said heavily, and turned to punch for the lift. 'Come on, Andrew,' he said in that same, resigned tone, but the armsman shook his head.

'No, Sir,' he said calmly. Venizelos' head turned, but the major wasn't looking at him. Instead, his gray eyes were locked with his Steadholder's, and he smiled ever so faintly. 'Before you say anything, My Lady, I should remind you that this is one order you can't give.'

'I beg your pardon?' Honors tone was chill, but LaFollet refused to flinch.

'I'm your personal armsman, My Lady. Under Grayson law, you can't legally order me to leave you if I believe your life is in danger. If you attempt to, it is not only my right but my responsibility to refuse to obey.'

'I'm not in the habit of tolerating insubordination, Major!' Honor said sharply, and LaFollet came to attention.

'I'm sorry you regard me as insubordinate, My Lady,' he said. 'If you wish to construe my actions in that light, you are fully entitled to dismiss me from your service upon our return to Grayson. In the meantime, I remain bound by my oath, not simply to you, but to the Conclave of Steadholders, to discharge my duty as your armsman.'

Honor glared at him for a long, smoldering moment, but her tone was almost conversational when she spoke again.

'We're not on Grayson, Andrew. We're on a Queens ship. Suppose I instruct Captain McKeon, as Prince Adrian's commanding officer, to order you below?'

'In that case, My Lady, I would, regretfully, be forced to refuse his orders,' LaFollet said, and his tone, too, had changed, as if they both knew already how the argument was going to end yet shared some peculiar responsibility to carry the debate to its inevitable conclusion. And as Alistair McKeon watched them, he realized that more than misplaced pride or even LaFollet’s sense of duty drove him. The Grayson's granite intransigence arose from a deep, intensely personal loyalty, in its own way, a deep and abiding love, though one without romance or sexuality, to the woman he served.