almost painful caution.
'Did they come back, Midge?' he half-whispered, and the tac officer shook her head, eyes huge. 'Would this sector's platforms necessarily have spotted them if they had come back?' the commander pressed.
'Not automatically, Sir. The Manties could have come back on a course outside their search envelope. But unless they knew about the sensors and deliberately set this up to fake us out, they would've come back in from any maneuvers on roughly reciprocal headings. If they'd done that, the platforms would have seen them ... and they've been gone for over a week, Sir.'
Ogilve nodded and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was incredible. The idea that the Manties would conduct some sort of exercise that took them away from Hancock at a time of such tension was ridiculous on the face of it. But impossible as it seemed, they'd done something even stupider. They'd pulled out entirely. Hancock Station was wide open!
He drew another deep breath and looked at his astrogator.
'How soon can we get the hell out of here?'
'Without our hyper footprint being detected?'
'Of course without being detected!'
'Um.' The astrogators fingers flew as he worked through the problem. 'On this vector, niner-four-point- eight hours to clear known Manty sensor arrays, Sir.'
'Damn,' Ogilve whispered. He rubbed his hands up and down the seams of his trousers and forced his impatience back under control. This was too important to risk blowing. He was going to have to wait. To make himself sit on it for another four days before he could head home with the unbelievable news. But once they reached Seaford—
'All right,' he said crisply. 'I want a complete shutdown. Nothing goes out from this ship. Jamie, abort the remainder of the data dumps. Midge, I want you to damned well live up here with your passive sensors. If anything even looks like it could be coming our way, I want to know it. This data just paid the entire cost of this operation from day one, and we're getting it home if we have to hyper out of here right under some Manty's nose!'
'But what about operational security, Sir?' his exec protested.
'I'm not going to call any attention to us,' Ogilve said tightly. 'But this is too important to risk losing, so if it looks like they may be going to spot us, we're out of here, and the hell with the rest of Operation Argus. This is exactly what Admiral Rollins has been waiting for, and we, by God, are going to tell him about it!'
CHAPTER TWENTY
Honor nodded to her Marine sentry and stepped through her cabin hatch without a word. Her face showed no emotion at all, but Nimitz was tense on her shoulder, and MacGuiness' welcoming smile congealed into nonexpression the moment he saw her.
'Good evening, Ma'am,' he said.
She turned her head at the sound of his voice, and her eyes flickered, as if only now noting his presence. He watched her lips tighten for just an instant, but then she drew a deep breath and smiled at him. To someone who didn't know her, that smile might have looked almost natural.
'Good evening, Mac.' She crossed to her desk and dropped her beret on it, then ran her hands through her hair, looking away from him for a moment, before she moved Nimitz from her shoulder to his padded perch, sat in her chair, and swiveled back to face the steward.
'I've got to finish my report on the maneuvers,' she said. 'Screen my calls while I deal with it, will you? Put anything from Commander Henke, Admiral Sarnow or his staff, or any of the other skippers through, but ask anyone else if the Exec can handle it.'
'Of course, Ma'am.' MacGuiness hid his concern at the unusual order, and she smiled again, gratefully, at his neutral tone.
'Thank you.' She booted her terminal, and he cleared his throat.
'Would you like a cup of cocoa, Ma'am?'
'No, thank you,' she said without raising her eyes from the screen. MacGuiness looked at the crown of her head, then exchanged silent glances with Nimitz. The 'cat's body language radiated his own tension, but he flicked his ears and turned his head, pointing his muzzle at the hatch to the captain's pantry, and the steward relaxed slightly. He nodded back and withdrew like a puff of breeze.
Honor continued to stare at the characters on her screen until she heard the hatch close behind him, then shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. She hadn't missed the silent exchange between MacGuiness and Nimitz. A part of her hunkered petulantly down deep inside, resenting it, but most of her was intensely grateful.
She lowered her hands and tipped her chair back with a sigh. Nimitz crooned to her from his perch, and she looked up at him with a weary, bittersweet smile.
'I know,' she said quietly.
He hopped down onto her desk and sat upright, holding her dark eyes with his grass-green gaze, and she reached out to caress his soft cream and gray fur. Her fingers were light, barely brushing him, but he didn't push her for more energetic petting, and she felt his concern reaching out to her.
For as long as Nimitz had been with her, Honor had always known he did something to help her through spasms of anger or depression, yet she'd never been able to figure out what it was. As far as she knew, no one who'd been adopted by a 'cat had ever been able to do so, but the strange intensification of their link since Grayson was at work now. She felt his touch, like a loving mental hand reaching deep inside her to soothe the raw edges of her emotions. He wasn't taking them away. Perhaps that was beyond his ability—or perhaps he knew how she would have resented it. Perhaps it was even simpler than that, something which would have been against his own principles. She didn't know, but she closed her eyes once more, hands gentle on his fur while his equally gentle caress comforted her inner hurt.
It was bitterly unfair. She'd been so happy, despite the tension of the Havenite crisis, and now this. It was as if Young had known how well things were going and deliberately gotten himself sent here just to ruin them. She wanted to scream and break things, to storm and rage at a universe that let things like this happen.
But the universe wasn't really unfair, she thought, and her mouth quirked. It just didn't give much of a damn one way or the other.
A strong, delicate true-hand touched her right cheek like a feather, and her eyes reopened. Nimitz crooned to her again, and her smile turned real. She drew him into her arms, hugging him to her breasts, feeling his relief as her inner pain ebbed.
'Thanks,' she said softly, burying her face in his furry warmth. He bleeked gently to her, and she gave him another, tighter hug, then lifted him back to his perch. 'Okay, Stinker. I'm on top of it, now.' He flipped his tail in agreement, and her smile became a grin. 'And the truth is, I do have to finish that report before I can run off to supper. So you just sit up there and keep an eye on me, right?'
He nodded and arranged himself comfortably, watching over her while she began scrolling through the paragraphs she'd already written.
Minutes passed, then a half hour, and there was no sound except the hum of Honor's terminal and the soft brush of fingers on a keyboard. She was so deep into her work she hardly noticed the soft com chime.
It sounded again, and she made a face and opened a window to accept the call at her workstation. The lines of her report vanished, and MacGuiness' face replaced them.
'Sorry to disturb you, Ma'am,' he said formally, 'but the Admiral is screening.'
'Thank you, Mac.' Honor straightened and brushed her fingers through her hair once more. It might be a good idea to let it grow long enough to braid, she thought absently, and keyed an 'ACCEPT' code.
'Good evening, Honor.' Admiral Sarnow's tenor was a bit deeper than usual, and she suppressed an ironic smile. She'd wondered if he'd heard the stories about her and Young.
'Good evening, Sir. What can I do for you?'
'I've been working my way through the dispatches
