On Basilisk Station

'Yes, Ma'am,' he said in a tiny voice.

HMS Fearless made her final heading change and settled into the groove, decelerating for a smooth orbital insertion. Honor was back on the bridge, watching Medusa swell in the visual display and feeling the change in the atmosphere about her. The apathy of their arrival here had faded, and if it hadn't been replaced by the esprit de corps she might have wished for, her crew's current attitude was at least a vast improvement.

The last six days had been rough for everyone ... and a close approximation to Hell for some. Lieutenant Commander Santos had good justification for her exhaustion. She'd practically driven her people with a whip when it became obvious Honor had no intention of slowing her drone deployment, but she'd driven herself even harder, and to her own amazement, she'd met every deadline. That last-minute design improvisation of hers had been little short of brilliant, and the drones were in place now. Dangerous holes remained, but at least Honor had a warning net covering seventy degrees either side of the ecliptic, and Santos seemed to be having some difficulty deciding whether she was more proud of her department's achievements or infuriated by her captain's demands.

Nor was she the only one caught between pride and resentment. Lieutenant Cardones, probably more to his own surprise than anyone else's, had actually managed to correct his mistakes with the drone programming. He'd been forced to go to McKeon for help with the remote reprogramming, just as Honor had hoped, and spent endless hours on the project, but he'd dealt with it. And, truth to tell, she was pleased by how well McKeon had responded. As nearly as she could tell, he hadn't raked Cardones over at all, despite what must have been a bitter recognition that he should have kept a closer eye on him in the first place, and from what she'd overheard, he'd subtly directed the youngster into finding the CIC links on his own.

By the time Webster had gotten the drone data collection net set up to her demanding satisfaction and Stromboli had computed two separate on-the-fly course corrections to double back for misdropped drones, every one of Honor's senior officers had been worn out, intensely irritated ... and working as a team again at last. It wasn't the way she would have chosen, but if self-defense was the only way she could goad them off their posteriors, she could stand their resultant unhappiness.

She turned her head as McKeon stepped out of the bridge lift and settled down in the executive officer's chair. He was as stiff and formal as ever, but she'd gotten past his defenses a time or two in the last week— especially with Cardones. Something was eating at him, that was clear, yet she suspected he, at least, understood exactly what she was doing. And, wonder of wonders, he wasn't fighting her on it. She more than suspected that he resented the way she'd gone about goading her crew back to life, and he wasn't exactly bending over backwards to help, nor had she been able to decide why he'd disliked her so from the beginning, but his professionalism seemed to be getting the better of whatever it was. There was no spontaneity in their relationship, no interplay of ideas, and the situation remained far from ideal, but at least they both seemed willing to admit, if only to themselves, that there was a problem. That was a major advance, and she hoped they were both professional enough to rise above their apparent incompatibility.

She shrugged the thought aside and looked back at her tactical display, frowning as Fearless crept through the outer parking orbits and the holo dot of a single small ship glowed crimson.

It was a courier boat, little more than a pair of Warshawski sails and an inertial compensator crammed into the tiniest possible hull, but its presence made her acutely uneasy, for it had diplomatic immunity and it was registered to the People's Republic of Haven.

She chewed the inside of her lip, wondering why seeing it bothered her so. She'd known Haven had a consulate and trade legation here on Medusa, but she hadn't realized until she read Young's official download that they maintained a diplomatic courier boat permanently on station. Legally, there was no reason why they shouldn't, but logically, the only possible purpose for a full consular mission on Medusa was covert operations of some sort. A simple trade mission could have handled Haven's legitimate interests in its traffic through the Basilisk Terminus, and the Medusan aborigines had nothing worth exporting, despite reports of 'legitimate Havenite merchants' trading with them. Those reports worried Honor. The conquest-bloated Republic no longer had any privately-owned merchantmen, and it had to be losing money on any conceivable exchange basis with the Medusans. Which, as far as she was concerned, obviously meant they were up to something else. But what?

Intelligence gathering to keep an eye on in-system Fleet deployments and traffic through the Basilisk Terminus made some sense. Medusa was an awfully inconvenient distance from the terminus for that purpose, but it wasn't as if there were any closer planets they could use. Maintaining a presence in the system as a counter to Manticore's might also make sense, especially given the periodic parliamentary attempts the Liberals still mounted to get Manticore out of the system. For all she knew, the Havenite consulate might also be the headquarters for whatever espionage was being practiced within the Kingdom itself, though she would have thought Trevor's Star a better choice for that.

Whatever they were doing, she didn't like it, and she liked the presence of that courier boat even less. Consular dispatch bags had diplomatic immunity regardless of the carrier, and there were enough Havenite merchantmen in evidence to transport any dispatches the consul needed carried. The only advantage to tying up a courier boat on permanent station here was its greater speed—and the fact that the entire vessel had diplomatic immunity and so was immune to examination or search regardless of anything else it might be doing. To Honor's mind, that implied some deep-seated ulterior motive, but she was well aware of her own automatic suspicion of anything Haven did. It was entirely possible that the courier boat's presence was as innocent as the Republic claimed, that only her own paranoia insisted it wasn't.

Of course it was. And it was also possible Pavel Young hadn't deliberately set out to cut her throat.

She snorted as Chief Killian put Fearless into orbit with his customary flawless precision and signaled 'Done with engines,' then turned to glance at Webster.

'Com, please raise the Resident Commissioner's office. Inform Dame Estelle that I would appreciate her finding time to meet with me at her earliest convenience.'

'Yes, Ma'am.'

'Thank you.'

She leaned back in her chair once more, listening. Reports murmured over the intercom as the impeller wedge and inertial compensator went down and the standby thrusters took over the automatic station-keeping function. Bridge ratings moved from station to station, tapping notes into memo pads, Lieutenant Brigham was buried in the cartography section with Stromboli and his senior yeoman, updating their records on the drone net, and Honor savored the routine, orderly way they went about their duties. Despite the wracking workload she'd dumped on these people, the ship was alive once more.

Now it was up to her to redirect that aliveness into a sense of teamwork which included her as their captain, not their taskmaster.

CHAPTER NINE

Dame Estelle Matsuko, Knight of the Order of King Roger and Resident Commissioner for Planetary Affairs on the planet Medusa in the name of Her Majesty Elizabeth III, Queen of Manticore and Defender of the Realm, rose behind her desk as her office door slid open. The tall naval commander who stepped through moved with the graceful stride of muscles accustomed to a gravity a great deal higher than Medusa's .85 g, and the treecat on her shoulder looked around with interested green eyes. Dame Estelle examined the pair of them with equal but hidden curiosity even as she extended a hand in welcome.

'Commander Harrington.'

'Commissioner.' The commander's crisp, clipped accent was as clear an indication of her birth world as the treecat or the way she moved, and her grip was firm but carefully metered. Dame Estelle had felt the same sort of handshake from other Sphinxians—and the few who'd absent-mindedly forgotten to watch what they were doing made her grateful for the ones who remembered.

'Won't you be seated?' Dame Estelle offered as the commander released her hand, and her brain was busy making mental notations.