On Basilisk Station

arrived, Honor reached out and pressed the override button, holding the lift door closed, and turned to him.

'Mr. Hauptman,' she said in a voice of frozen helium, 'you've seen fit to insult me and my officers and to threaten my parents. In fact, you have descended to the tactics of gutter scum, and that, in my opinion, Sir, is precisely what you have proven yourself to be.' Hauptman's nostrils flared in a congested face, but she continued in the same ice-cold voice.

'I am fully aware that you have no intention of forgetting this incident. Neither, I assure you, have I. Nor will I forget your threats. I am a Queen's officer. As such, I will react to any personal attack upon me only if and as it arises, and for myself, both personally and as a Queen's officer, I dislike the custom of dueling. But, Mr. Hauptman, should you ever attempt to carry through your threat against my parents—' her eyes were leveled missile batteries and the tic at the corner of her mouth jerked like a living thing '—I will denounce you publicly for your contemptible actions and demand satisfaction. And when you accept my challenge, Mr. Hauptman, I will kill you like the scum you are.'

Hauptman stepped back against the wall of the lift, staring at her in shocked disbelief.

'Believe it, Mr. Hauptman,' she said very, very softly, and let the lift door open at last.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Adrenalin still flared in Honor's blood and nerves as she rode the lift back to the bridge. That had been an ugly side of her, but the petty, repulsive shallowness hiding behind Klaus Hauptman's wealthy front had waked it, and she'd meant every word. More than that, he knew she had. And they both knew that his reputation — his all — important, self-worshipping reputation —would never survive should he refuse her challenge if it came.

She drew a deep breath as the lift stopped. The door opened, and she stepped out onto the bridge. Panowski looked up quickly, his face anxious, and she realized some of the vicious confrontation must have leaked past the briefing room hatch. Or perhaps it had simply been the tension between her and Hauptman when they passed back through on their way to the boat bay. It didn't matter. The lieutenant knew. His worried face showed his reaction, and she saw matching expressions on the faces of most of her ratings.

She paused for a moment, forcing herself to smile. Panowski's concern remained, but he relaxed visibly, and she made herself move slowly and calmly as she walked to the center of the bridge and looked around for McKeon. There was no sign of him, but the briefing room door was closed.

She crossed to it, and the executive officer looked up as the hatch slid aside. She didn't like stepping into that compartment just then. Too much cold hatred had washed its bulkheads, and she could feel the prickles of McKeon's residual rage radiating out to mesh and resonate with hers, yet he managed a strained smile and started to rise.

She waved him back and crossed to her own chair. She sank into it and turned it to face him.

'You took a chance, Alistair,' she said. It was the first time she'd ever used his given name, but he didn't even seem to notice.

'I—' He wiggled his shoulders. 'He just made me so damned mad, Ma'am. Coming in here like God descending to smite the sinners. And that last filthy trick of his—' The exec gritted his teeth and shook his head.

'He's not going to forget the way you backed him down.' McKeon nodded, and Honor felt a certain bitter irony at the way her words echoed his own warning to her after Tremaine discovered that first illegal Hauptman shipment. 'You shouldn't have done it,' she went on levelly. 'It was my fight and my responsibility, but ... thank you.'

McKeon's head came up, and he flushed.

'It wasn't just your fight, Ma'am. It was the Navy's. Hell, it was Fearless's, and that makes it mine, too.' His flush deepened, and he looked back down at the fingers suddenly interlaced in his lap.

'I ... haven't been much of an exec to you, have I, Ma'am?' he asked quietly.

Honor started a quick reply, then paused, gazing at the crown of his lowered head. This man had just put himself far, far out on a limb for her. He'd antagonized one of the most powerful men in the Kingdom, and she shuddered to think where her confrontation with Hauptman would have ended had she responded without his intervention. The use of the collector tap to turn Hauptman's manipulations back on him had never even occurred to her. She hadn't been thinking clearly enough for that. All she'd felt was hate and disgust and the need to strike back. She knew herself—knew she'd hovered on the brink of physically attacking the man in her fury, and that would have ruined her, whatever the provocation.

McKeon had stopped her before she did that. He'd seen the opening and taken it, forced Hauptman back onto the defensive, won her time to regain at least some control of herself. She owed him for that—owed him a deep, intensely personal debt she rather doubted she could every repay. And because she did, she wanted to tell him not to worry, to brush over his shortcomings as her first officer.

But she was a warship's captain. Personal feelings and gratitude, however deep or deserved, took second place to that. They must. And so she cleared her throat and spoke in a soft, impersonal tone.

'No, Mr. McKeon,' she said. 'You haven't.' She watched him flinch, saw his shoulders tighten, and wanted to reach out to him. But she didn't. She simply sat there, waiting.

The silence stretched out, tight and painful, and McKeon's hands washed themselves in his lap. She could hear him breathing, listened to the throb of her own pulse, and still she waited. She could feel his need to say something more and knew he needed time to say it in, and that at least she could give him, however long it took.

'I know I haven't, Ma'am,' he said finally. 'And ... I'm sorry.' He twitched a shrug and looked up at her face. 'It's not much, but it's all I can say. I've let you down—let the ship down—and I'm sorry.'

'Why, Mr. McKeon?' she asked softly. He winced at the compassion in her voice, but he understood her question. For a moment she thought he might thrust himself up out of the chair and flee, but he didn't.

'Because—' He swallowed and looked around the briefing room without really seeing it. 'Because I let my personal feelings get in the way of my duty, Ma'am.' He made himself face her as he admitted it, and in that moment their ages were reversed. The tall, powerful executive officer seemed suddenly young and vulnerable, for all his years of experience, while he met her eyes almost desperately, as if begging her to understand.

'You came aboard, and you looked so damned young,' he went on in a voice of wretched self-loathing. 'I knew you deserved the command. God, I only had to check your record to know that! But I wanted it so badly myself. I didn't have the seniority for it—' He broke off and laughed harshly.

'I'll probably never have the seniority. I'm a hack, Captain. A plodder. The kind who refuses to stick his neck out. But, God, how I wanted this ship. More than I'd ever admitted to myself. And there you were—five years younger than me with one hyper-capable command already under your belt, walking through the hatch straight from ATC and wearing the white beret I wanted.'

His hands fisted in his lap, and then he did rise. He paced up and down the small briefing room like a caged animal, and Honor felt his anguish and self-condemnation. She could almost see the fog of his misery, wrapped around him like poison, but she sat on her sudden desire to break his monologue, to stop him or defend him from himself. She couldn't. He needed to say it—and she needed for him to say it, if there was any hope the barriers between them would truly come down.

'I hated you.' His voice was muffled, bouncing back from the bulkhead as he looked away from her. 'I told myself I didn't, but I did. And it didn't get better. It got worse every day. It got worse every time I saw you do something right and realized I'd wanted you to do it wrong so I could justify the way I felt.

'And then there were the maneuvers.' He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. 'Damn it, I knew they'd handed you an impossible job after the way they gutted our armament! I knew it was impossible—and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail. Captain, I'm a tac