The Short Victorious War

back, but there was an edge of carefully hidden regret behind his eyes. Even now the left side of the Captain's mouth was less expressive and responsive, giving her smile a lopsided quality that was more sensed than seen. 'The fact that someone might have called you in earlier had nothing at all to do with it,' he added, and Honor chuckled.

'Not a thing,' she said, crossing the porch to stand the collapsed glider in the corner.

'As it happens, I did try to com you, Ma'am,' MacGuiness said after a moment, his voice more serious. 'A letter from the Admiralty arrived this afternoon.'

Honor froze for just one moment, then adjusted the glider's position with careful precision. The Admiralty used electronic mail for most purposes; official letters were sent only under very special circumstances, and she schooled her face into calm and made herself fight down a sudden surge of excitement before she turned and raised an eyebrow.

'Where is it?'

'Beside your plate, Ma'am.' MacGuiness glanced pointedly at his chrono. 'Your supper's waiting,' he added, and Honor's mouth quirked in another smile.

'I see,' she murmured. 'Well, let me get washed up and I'll deal with both of them, Mac.'

'At your convenience, Ma'am,' MacGuiness said without a trace of triumph.

Honor forced herself to move without haste as she walked into the dining room and felt the quiet old house about her like a shield. She was an only child, and her parents had an apartment near their medical offices in Duvalier City, almost five hundred kilometers to the north. They were seldom 'home' except on weekends, and her birthplace always seemed a bit empty without them. It was odd. Somehow she always pictured them here whenever she was away, as if they and the house were a single, inseparable entity, like a protecting shadow of her childhood.

MacGuiness was waiting, napkin neatly folded over one forearm, as she slid into her chair. One of the perks for a captain of the list was a permanently assigned steward, though Honor still wasn't entirely positive how MacGuiness had chosen himself for that duty. It was just one of those inevitable things, and he watched over her like a mother hawk, but he had his own ironclad rules. They included the notion that nothing short of pitched battle should be allowed to interfere with his captain's meals, and he cleared his throat as she reached for the anachronistic, heavily embossed envelope. She looked up, and he whisked the cover from a serving dish with pointed emphasis.

'Not this time, Mac,' she murmured, breaking the seal, and he sighed and replaced the cover. Nimitz contemplated their human antics with a small, amused 'bleek' from his place at the far end of the table, and the steward replied with a repressive frown.

Honor opened the envelope and slid out two sheets of equally archaic parchment. They crackled crisply, and her eyes—organic and cybernetic alike—opened wide as they flicked over the formal printed words on the first page. MacGuiness stiffened at her shoulder as she inhaled sharply, and she read it a second time, then glanced at the second sheet and looked up to meet his gaze.

'I think,' she said slowly, 'that it's time to open the good stuff, Mac. How about a bottle of the Delacourt '27?'

'The Delacourt, Ma'am?'

'I don't think Dad will mind... under the circumstances.'

'I see. May I assume, then, that it's good news, Ma'am?'

'You may, indeed.' She cleared her throat and stroked the parchment almost reverently. 'It seems, Mac, that BuMed in its infinite wisdom has decided I'm fit for duty again, and Admiral Cortez has found a ship for me.' She looked up from the orders with a sudden, blinding smile. 'In fact, he's giving me Nike.'

The normally unflappable MacGuiness stared back at her, and his jaw dropped. HMS Nike wasn't just a battlecruiser. She was the battlecruiser, the fiercely sought after, most prestigious prize any captain could covet. There was always a Nike, with a list of battle honors reaching clear back to Edward Saganami, the founder of the Royal Manticoran Navy, and the current Nike was the newest, most powerful battlecruiser in the Fleet.

Honor laughed out loud and tapped the second sheet of parchment.

'According to this, we go aboard Wednesday,' she said, 'Ready for a little space duty again, Mac?'

MacGuiness' eyes met hers, and then he shook himself, and a huge, matching smile lit his own face.

'Yes, Ma'am. I think I can stand that—and this certainly is a night for the Delacourt!'

CHAPTER TWO

The intra-system shuttle settled into the docking buffers of Her Majesty's Space Station Hephaestus, and Honor tapped the save key on her memo pad and rose from her seat just inside the hatch.

Her face gave no hint of her inner excitement as she drew the white beret of a starship's commander from under her left epaulet. She grimaced mentally as she adjusted it, for she hadn't worn it in over a T-year, and she hadn't allowed for the way her hair had grown. It was considered bad luck for an RMN officer to replace her first white beret, which meant she either had to get her hair clipped or the beret re-sized, she thought, and held out her arms to Nimitz.

The 'cat swarmed up onto her padded shoulder and settled his weight with a soft bleek, then patted the soft, white beret with a proprietary air. Honor hid a grin that would never have suited the probity of a senior grade captain, and Nimitz snorted in amused tolerance. He knew how much that symbol meant to her, and he saw absolutely no reason she shouldn't show it.

For that matter, Honor had to admit there was no real need to assume her 'captain's face' so soon, since, aside from MacGuiness, no one on the shuttle knew who she was or why she was here. But she needed the practice. Even the shuttle felt strange after so long off a command deck, and few things were more important than starting a new command off on the right foot. Besides—

She brought her mental babbling to a stern halt and admitted the truth. She didn't feel just 'strange'; she felt worried, and under her joy at getting back into space, butterflies mated in her midsection. She'd put in all the simulation hours she'd been allowed between bouts of surgery and therapy, but that wasn't as many as she would have liked. Unfortunately, it was hard to argue with your physician when he was also your father, and even if Doctor Harrington had allowed all the sim time she wanted, simulators weren't the same as reality. Besides, Nike would be her biggest, most powerful ship yet—eight hundred and eighty thousand tons, with a crew of over two thousand—which was enough to make anyone nervous after so long dirt-side, simulators or no.

Yet she knew her long medical leave wasn't the only reason for her anxiety. Being picked for Nike was an enormous professional compliment, especially for a captain who'd never before held battlecruiser command. Among other things, it was an implicit approval of her performance in her last command, whatever her own mixed feelings, and a clear indication the Admiralty was grooming her for flag rank. But there was another side to the coin, as well. With opportunity came responsibility... and the chance to fail.

She inhaled deeply, squaring her shoulders, then touched the three gold stars embroidered on her tunic, and deep down inside something laughed at her own reactions. Each of those stars represented a previous hyper- capable command, and she'd been through almost exactly the same internal cycle with each of them. Oh, there were differences this time, but there were always differences, and the underlying truth never changed. There was nothing in the universe she wanted more than command... and nothing that scared her worse than the thought of failing once she had it.

Nimitz bleeked again, softly, in her ear. The sound was comforting yet scolding, and she glanced over at him. A delicate yawn showed needle-sharp white fangs in the lazy, confident grin of a predator, and humor narrowed her eyes as she nibbled his ears and started for the hatch with MacGuiness at her heels.

The personnel tube deposited them at a slip on the extreme rim of Hephaestus' hull. The space station seemed larger every time Honor saw it... probably because it was.