The Service of the Sword

won't be so intense and you'll be sure to catch your shuttle.'

'Yes, that will be for the good,' Gonzalvez said, shaking the tech's hand. 'Thank you very much for all your help.'

'No problem. Have a good trip.'

Gonzalvez sat down by Mullins and took a breath.

'You heard?'

'I heard,' Mullins replied. 'We'll talk about it when we get back.'

'Boarding for the Adrian Bayside will begin in just a moment.' A slim female in Bayside Lines uniform appeared at the gate door. 'I would like to have anyone with mobility problems, very small children or priority passes to come up first.'

'Well, two out of three ain't bad,' Mullins said, holding up a hand. 'Give me a hand sonny,' he quavered.

'Yes, Mother,' Gonzalvez said with a sigh. 'Coming, 'Robert'?'

'I suppose,' Mladek said, standing up and smiling. 'Let me give you a hand, there, Mistress.'

'Such nice boys,' Mullins said, shuffling towards the personnel tube. 'You'd never know I met his father in a spaceport bar, would you?'

'Mother!'

CHAPTER 9 Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Admiral. Period.

After surviving extraction from Prague, sneaking through Peep space and convincing the Manty contingent on Excelsior that they weren't really double agents—look, here's a Peep Admiral Defector for proof!—Mullins thought it was likely that he would die right here and right now. Or, at least, he halfway wished his heart would just stop or a rock would drop on him or something.

'What in the ever living hells was going through what might, with leniency, be referred to as your mind?!' Admiral Givens was not known for raising her voice. And she did not now. The very fact that they practically had to strain to hear her tongue-lashing, which was just winding up after more than thirty minutes that had traced the course of their idiocy from generations before, through infancy and up to the present day, made it worse.

'Well, we did get the Admiral back,' Gonzalvez pointed out.

'It's clear proof that your mother dropped you on your head as a child that you think that question was other than rhetorical, Major Gonzalvez,' the admiral continued. 'The only reason that Excelsior didn't sanction you was that you brought the Admiral back. And that was a good thing. His information, I'll admit, was useful confirmation.'

'Confirmation, Ma'am?' Mullins asked. 'He had a head full of StateSec secrets and codes!'

'All of which, and more, Honor Harrington brought back two weeks ago,' Givens said.

'Harrington?' Gonzalvez blurted. 'She's dead.'

'So we all thought,' the admiral replied. 'But, in fact, she ended up on the ground on Hades. She staged the largest prison breakout in history and returned with not only a half a million prisoners, but reams of data on StateSec procedures and communications and some political prisoners that the Havenites had insisted had been dead for years.'

'So,' Mullins said. 'We went through all of that for confirmation?'

'Exactly,' Givens snappped. 'You two are the most consummate foul-ups I have in my entire organization. I cannot let you out of my sight for more than thirty seconds without you involving yourself in some intensely moronic encounter. I don't care if you live through them; the chaos that you leave in your wake more than makes up for your survival. The whole point is to enter and exit seamlessly, causing not a ripple while you are there. Not killing double agents, blowing up buildings, getting in car chases and otherwise disporting yourselves like you're playing a game. Is any of this getting through to you two hydrocephalic morons.'

'Yes, Ma'am!'

'I'm not in this business to build structures just for you to kick them down like a couple of children who find a pretty vase to break! This is not going to be a short war and we need all the intelligence we can gather; sending you two to a planet is like asking to have the entire system shut out for the rest of the war! Am I getting through to you?'

'Yes, Ma'am!' they chorused.

'I don't even know why I waste my breath,' she muttered. She finally took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers. 'What I want to do is space both of you, both for the good of NavInt and for my own sanity. But, as a personal favor to Agent Covilla I have agreed to give you a reprieve.'

'Ma'am?' Gonzalvez said, stunned.

'Agent Covilla said that the two of you were of some assistance to her in her mission to extract the Admiral,' Givens replied, touching a button on her desk. She waved as a woman walked through the door. She appeared to be about thirty, standard, plain and blunt featured, with male-short blond hair. She was wearing the uniform of a captain with ONI markings. 'She personally convinced me that despite your amateurish blunderings on Prague, not to mention the reason you were there, that I should let you off with no more than a warning. Do I have to spell it out for you?'

'No more unauthorized adventures?' Gonzalvez asked, glancing sideways at the woman. He had never seen her before in his life.

'That should go without saying. No, if you ever get that screwed up on a mission again, authorized or un authorized, I will personally strap you to a missile and fire you out the tube. Do I make myself clear?'

'Clear, Ma'am,' they both chorused.

'Captain Covilla?' Givens said. 'Do you have anything?'

'No, Ma'am,' the captain said. Her voice was gravelly; she'd either spent a lot of time shouting at some point or she'd had a bad experience with death pressure. 'I'd like a moment of Captain Mullins' time.'

'Very well,' Givens said, pointing to the door. 'Dismissed.'

All three found themselves out in the corridor, looking around at the busy scurrying of NavInt.

'Confirmation,' Gonzalvez muttered. 'We put our butts on the line for confirmation!'

'Typical,' Covilla growled. 'Captain Mullins, if you could step down to my office, please?'

'Yes, Ma'am,' Mullins said. 'What about Captain Gonzalvez?'

'Well, he can get started on the paperwork.'

'Paperwork?' Gonzalvez said suspiciously.

'Your unauthorized adventure was expensive,' Covilla said. 'We're going to have to sort out which part was duty and which part was not. And you're going to be paying back the non-duty portion. Come on, Captain.'

He followed her to her office, noting that she had a decidedly un-ladylike gait that bespoke significant time in small-craft. He came to attention as she walked around her desk and sat in the room's sole chair.

'Do you have anything you want to add to the debrief?' she asked, flipping a pad across the desk. 'You can stand at ease.'

'I just have a question,' Mullins said, spreading his feet apart and placing his hands behind his back in a position closer to parade rest.

'If it doesn't violate your need to know,' Covilla responded with a thin smile.