A Rising Thunder

could have been placed for adoption, of course, but they’d known they wanted a fourth child after they packed their eldest off to college and qualified for another. So the second embryo had been held in cryo until that day, and Jacques had ended up with a younger sister as well as a twin.

He’d always adored her, and he’d developed a fiercely protective streak where she was concerned as they both grew older. There’d been times when she’d cut him down to size with bloody efficiency for “interfering” in her life, but he hadn’t let that faze him. It wasn’t easy being a Benton-Ramirez y Chou, and he’d known how much Allison hated the thought of being squeezed and molded into one of the roles expected out of her family. He hadn’t wanted her forced to be anyone she didn’t want to be, and he’d been damned if he’d let anyone do that to her, even if his “nosiness” and “rock-headedness” had pissed her off upon occasion. And he’d been picky as hell about who he encouraged to get close to her, too. Yet he’d never had a single qualm about introducing her to Alfred Harrington…and he’d stood as Alfred’s best man at the wedding.

There’d never been a moment in all the years since when he’d felt the least trace of regret, either. Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou had two birth brothers, and he loved both of them (although Anthony could really piss him off; not all sibling rivalries died with the mere passage of time), yet the truth was that he was closer to Alfred than to either of them.

God, he looks awful, he thought now, and the frigging strike was three damned months ago! He must’ve been a basket case, right after it, and I let my goddamned ‘responsibilities’ get in the way? Christ! Four fucking days. That’s how long it would have taken. I could have given him the four days to at least come out here and tell him in person that I—

Tell him what? The question cut Jacques off in mid-thought. He couldn’t have told Alfred one thing he didn’t already know. Couldn’t have accomplished anything Allison and his daughters and son couldn’t. Yet he knew he would never forgive himself for not somehow accomplishing something anyway.

“Daddy’s right, Uncle Jacques,” Honor said now. “We knew what you’d have said. You did say it, in your letters. And it’s not like we’re the only family — here or on Beowulf — who’s had to deal with the same thing. We’re…handling it as well as anyone else, I think.”

“I can see that,” Jacques replied. But he and Honor had always been close, and he knew she saw the question behind his lie. If you’re handling it that well, why are all of you still here and not home on Sphinx? He saw the awareness in her eyes, but she only looked back steadily.

“At any rate, I’m here now,” he said more briskly, “and it looks like I’m going to be able to stay for at least a while.”

“Really?” Allison looked across the lawn table at him, and he heard the happiness in her voice. “How long?”

“At least—” he began, then paused and quirked an eyebrow at Honor. “What, another T-week or so, you think, Honor?”

“About that.” She smiled crookedly. “Maybe a day or two longer.”

Allison and Alfred both looked sharply at their elder daughter, and Honor tasted their emotions as they did the math. It didn’t take long; every Manticoran knew when the Solly attack was due to reach Manticore.

“Well, we’ll be delighted to have you,” Allison said after a moment. “On the other hand, if you’re going to be here that long, maybe we should go ahead and reopen Harrington House, Honor?” She gave her daughter a half- humorous, half-resigned look. “He wouldn’t be staying so long if it wasn’t official, and if that’s the case, he probably needs to be close to Landing. Besides, your father and I have been imposing on your and Emily and Hamish’s hospitality long enough.”

“You know perfectly well that you haven’t been imposing on anyone Mother. But if you want the house, of course you’re welcome to it. For that matter, I’ve told you before; it’s yours and Daddy’s now. I spend every minute I can here at White Haven, anyway, and it makes a lot more sense for you and the twins to use the house than for it to just stand empty.”

She shrugged, although “stand empty” was a highly inaccurate description of her Jason Bay mansion’s normal state. It was fully staffed at all times, whether she herself was in residence or not. For that matter, it was Harrington Steading’s embassy on Manticore, and its official functions never shut down. But the true reason she’d avoided the cliff-top mansion since coming home from Haven were all the memories it held of Andrew and Miranda LaFollet, of Farragut, and of Sergeant Jeremiah Tennard. Eventually she’d have to return, she knew, but she wasn’t prepared to confront all those reminders just yet.

And Mother knows that, too, she thought. But if she thinks Daddy’s healed enough to go home — as far as Landing, at least, even if he’s not ready for the freehold yet — that’s got to be a good sign. And she’s right, having Uncle Jacques along will help a lot. Besides, it really is more home for them than it is for me. That’d be true even if I hadn’t married Hamish and Emily, given how much time I spend completely off-world.

“That’s settled, then,” Allison said. “I’ll screen M— I mean, I’ll have Mac screen the staff to warn them we’re coming home.”

It was such a brief pause, and so quickly corrected, that only Honor and Nimitz caught the way she’d almost slipped and said “Miranda.”

“Well, it would appear it’s a good thing the two of you have finished settling my fate,” Jacques said with a smile. “I see we’re about to be descended upon by what I believe is technically called a thundering herd.”

He pointed to the small group (or perhaps not so small as all that, actually) spilling out of the house’s French doors, and Honor tasted the way the alertness of the posse of armsmen (and one armswoman) scattered around the terrace spiked, as they, too, noticed the newcomers.

They were more focused than ever, those guardians, after the Yawata Strike and Anton Zilwicki’s briefings about nano-programed assassins, and she tasted her uncle’s cold, grim approval of their alertness.

Once, she knew, he’d found watching her learn to put up with her personal armsmen amusing, even though he’d understood (better than her parents, really) why that sort of security was necessary. Yet today she sensed no amusement in Jacques Benton-Ramirez y Chou’s mind-glow as he gazed at that protective, green-uniformed cordon.

And Mother and Daddy have changed their attitudes, too, she thought sadly.

There’d been a time when her parents had put up with the twins’ personal armsmen only because Grayson law required them to. They’d realized Jeremiah Tennard and Luke Blackett kept a watchful eye on them, as well, but they’d regarded it as a necessary (if rather touching) nuisance in their own case. One to be evaded whenever possible.

Not since the Yawata Strike. Not since Allison Harrington and her grandson had lived only because two of those armsmen had died for them.

They hadn’t raised even a token objection when Honor informed them, firmly, that from now on, they had their own personal armsmen. And despite an initial standoffishness — a defensive reaction born of the hurt of LaFollet’s and Tennard’s deaths — they’d adjusted better than she’d been afraid they might. Not that she hadn’t put some careful consideration into picking the proper guardians.

First, she’d decided, any candidates had to be prolong recipients. None of her own original armsmen had received the antiaging therapies. She knew how that felt, and she wasn’t about to have her parents watch someone that close to them grow old and die before their eyes. Yet that had been only the first (and least difficult) of the qualifications she’d considered when she and Spencer Hawke started reviewing dossiers.

Sergeant Isaiah Matlock, her father’s armsman, was a very rare bird: the son of a forestry ranger on a planet whose wilderness didn’t precisely welcome human intruders. The hearty souls who ventured out into it anyway were regarded as dangerous crackpots by their stay-at-home friends and neighbors, but Matlock’s family, had been involved in managing Grayson’s forests for three hundred T-years. They had a love for those forests which was possibly even deeper than that of a Sphinxian like Alfred Harrington, probably precisely because their homeworld’s wilderness did its level best to kill them every day. Honor expected Isaiah to embrace Sphinx joyfully, despite its gravity, and she was pleased with the compatibility already apparent between him and Dr. Harrington. If