Mission of Honor

Chapter Thirty-Five

Honor Alexander-Harrington sat silently on her flag bridge as HMS Invictus decelerated steadily towards the planet of her birth. Nimitz was on the back of her command chair, but not lying stretched along it as he usually was. Instead, he sat bolt upright, gazing into the visual display with her. The two of them might have been carved out of stone, and the silence on the bridge was absolute.

Honor's expression was calm, almost serene, but inside, where thoughts and emotions ought to have been, there was only a vast, singing silence, as empty as the vacuum beyond her flagship's hull.

She no longer needed to look at the plot. Its icons had already told her how short of reality her dread had fallen. The space about the system's two inhabited planets was crowded with shipping, showing far greater numbers of impeller signatures than would have been permitted in such proximity when Eighth Fleet departed for the Haven System. But those ships weren't the evidence her fears might have been too dark—that the damage had actually been less severe than she'd dreaded. No, those ships were the proof it had been even worse, for they were still only sorting through the wreckage, better than two weeks after the actual attack, and warning beacons marked prodigious spills of debris—and bodies—which had once been the heart and bone of the Star Empire of Manticore's industrial might.

It's odd , a corner of her brain whispered. There was wreckage after the Battle of Manticore, too, but not like this. Oh, no. Not like this. This time every single warship we lost was caught docked, not destroyed in action. And most of the dead are civilians this time .

A sense of failure flowed through her, steadily, with all the patience of an ocean, and with it came shame. A dark guilt that burned like chilled vitriol, for she had failed in the solemn promise she'd made when she was seventeen T-years old. The vow she'd kept for all the years between then and now—honored with a fidelity which only made her present failure infinitely worse. This was exactly what she'd joined the Navy all those years ago to prevent. This was the wreckage of her star nation, these were the bodies of her civilians, and all of it was the work of enemies she was supposed to have stopped before they ever got close enough to play atrocity's midwife.

Nimitz made a small, soft sound of protest, and she felt him leaning forward, pressing against the back of her neck. She knew, in the part of her brain where conscious thought lived, that he was right. She hadn't even been here. When this attack came sweeping through her star system like a tsunami, she'd been over a light-century away, doing her best to end a war. She wasn't the one who'd let it past her.

But however right he might have been, he was still wrong, she thought grimly. No, she hadn't been here. But she was a full admiral in her queen's service. She was one of the Royal Navy's most senior officers, one of the people who planned and executed its strategy.

One of the people responsible for visualizing threats and stopping them.

Invictus settled into orbit, farther out than usual to clear the debris fields which had once been Her Majesty's Space Station Vulcan , and she gazed at the image of her home world, so far below.

"Excuse me, Your Grace," a voice said quietly.

Honor turned her head and looked at Lieutenant Commander Harper Brantley, her staff communications officer.

"Yes, Harper?"

It was wrong, she thought, that her voice should sound so ordinary, so normal.

"You have a communications request," Brantley told her. "It's from the Admiralty, Your Grace," he added when she arched an eyebrow. "The request is coded private."

"I see." She stood, held out her arms, and caught Nimitz as he leapt gracefully into them. "I'll take it in my briefing room," she continued, cradling the 'cat as she walked across the bridge.

"Yes, Ma'am."

Honor felt Waldemar Tьmmel watching her. Her young flag lieutenant had been hit even harder than most of her personnel by the news from home, given that his parents and two of his four siblings had all lived aboard Hephaestus . Their deaths hadn't yet been confirmed—not as far as anyone aboard Invictus knew, at any rate—but there was no optimism in his bleak emotions. She'd done her best to reach out to him during the voyage back to Manticore by way of Trevor's Star, tried to help him through his anxious grief, but she'd failed. Worse, she didn't know if she'd failed because that grief was too deep or because her own mingled grief and guilt had kept her from trying hard enough.

Yet despite everything, he continued to do his duty. Partly because its familiar demands were comforting, something he could cling to and concentrate upon to distract himself from thoughts of his family. Even more, though, she knew, it was because it was his duty. Because he refused to allow what had happened to his universe to prevent him from discharging his responsibilities.

Now she felt him wondering if she would need him in the briefing room, and she looked at him long enough to shake her head. He gazed at her for an instant, then nodded and settled back into his bridge chair.

Spencer Hawke, on the other hand, never even hesitated. He simply followed his Steadholder across her flag bridge and into the briefing room, then arranged himself against the bulkhead behind her.

Honor felt him there, at her back. Technically, she supposed, she should have instructed him to wait outside the briefing room door, given the security code Brantley had said the message carried. That thought had crossed her mind more than once over the years, in similar situations, yet it had never even occurred to her to actually do it with Andrew LaFollet, and she knew she would never do it with Hawke, either. He was a Grayson armsman, and he would guard his steadholder's secrets with the same iron fidelity with which he guarded her life.

She seated herself, set Nimitz on the conference table to one side of her terminal, and brought up the display.

"Put it through, Harper," she told the com officer when his image appeared.

"Yes, Ma'am," he replied, and disappeared, to be replaced almost instantly by a brown-haired, brown-eyed man of average build in the uniform of a captain of the list. She recognized him immediately.

"Good afternoon, Jackson," she said.

"Good afternoon, Your Grace," Captain Jackson Fargo replied quietly. "It's good to see you home again, although I wish it were under other circumstances."

"I know." She smiled briefly at the man who headed Hamish Alexander-Harrington's Admiralty House staff. "It's good to see you again, too, with the same proviso."

"Thank you, Your Grace." Fargo gave her a small half-bow, then cleared his throat. "The First Lord asked me to screen you. He's actually on Sphinx at this moment. Well, more accurately, he's aboard a shuttle which happens to be headed in your direction at this moment. His ETA is about twelve minutes, and he asked me to tell you he would very much like to join you aboard your flagship when he arrives, if that would be convenient."

A tiny flicker of joy flashed like distant lightning across the horizon of the emptiness within her, and she felt herself smiling ever so slightly.

"I believe, Captain," Lady Dame Honor Alexander-Harrington told him, "that I'll be able to find the time somehow."

* * *

God, he looks terrible!

The thought flicked through Honor's mind the instant Hamish swung across the boarding tube's interface and into the internal gravity of Invictus ' boat bay.

She felt Nimitz's agreement and tasted a fresh stab of the treecat's own concern as Samantha looked across at them from her perch on Hamish's shoulder. Nimitz's mate looked worn, exhausted. Her normally immaculate pelt was almost disheveled, and her tail hung down Hamish's back like the banner of a defeated army.

Hamish looked almost as bad, Honor thought. But then she realized that wasn't really true. His shoulders were as square as always, his back as straight, his head unbowed. He carried himself with assurance, and only someone who knew him well might have noted the fresh lines on his face, the fresh silver at his temples, the shadows in his blue eyes. But Honor didn't need those physical signs. She could taste—share—his inner exhaustion, and beneath his duty to show the confident face the public—and his subordinates—needed to see, there was a bottomless, brooding grief. A sense of failure that fully matched her own, and something else, even darker and more personal. Less corrosive than her own guilt—though she knew he shared that, as well—but colder and even more crushing.

No sign of those emotions was permitted to show as he formally requested the boat bay officer of the deck's permission to board the ship. Then he was through the formalities, past the sideboys, past Captain Cardones, with Tobias Stimson, his own armsman at his heels. Sergeant Stimson was as alert and professional looking as always, the perfect example of a Grayson armsman, yet when she looked at him, she tasted his own dark night of the soul, like a mirror of Hamish's and Samantha's.

Concern for both of them—all three of them—flared through her, but then Hamish was there, holding out his hand to her.

She took it in the formal handshake to which they were always careful to restrict themselves on official occasions, and she felt a fresh stab of concern as she realized his fingers were actually trembling slightly with exhaustion and the terrible, midnight-black grief that rode his shoulders like some hunched, ravenous beast. She stood there, looking into his eyes for a heartbeat which seemed to last forever, seeing that beast's shadows in those blue depths, and then she let go of his hand. Before even she realized what she was doing, her arms went about him, instead, and she closed her own eyes, leaning forward to rest her cheek on his shoulder.

For just an instant, he stiffened as she abruptly abandoned formality. But only for an instant, and then his arms tightened around her, hugging her while Samantha and Nimitz crooned to one another.

"Welcome home," he whispered in her ear. "Oh, God—welcome home , Honor."

* * *

"Well," Honor said in a determinedly light tone as the lift carried them towards her quarters, "we've just put naval discipline back a century or so."

"Frankly," Hamish said, one arm still around her, "I'm not too worried about the precedent. After all, how many fleet commanders are going to be married to first lords?"

"Not many, I suppose," she conceded, but she tasted the determination with which he sought to match her own light tone and knew how hard he found it.

The lift car stopped, the doors opened, and she, Hamish, Nimitz, Samantha, Hawke, and Stimson headed down the passage to her quarters. Clifford McGraw had the duty outside her door, and he came to attention, saluted her and Hamish, then nodded to Stimson and Hawke and hit the door button.

The panel slid aside, and Honor and Hamish stepped through it. Somewhat to her surprise, neither Hawke nor Stimson made any move to follow them. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder, and her eyebrows rose in even greater surprise, for Stimson had his hand on Hawke's shoulder. Even among the personal armsmen of a Garsyon steaholder, noncoms didn't usually physically stop one of their officers in the pursuit of his duty, and she looked a question at both of them. She more than half expected an explanation, but instead, Hawke only shook his head, nodded in Hamish's direction, and then closed the door behind them.

"My God," Honor said. "I can't believe all three of them are just going to stand out there in the hall without at least making sure there are no ruthless assassins hiding in the sleeping cabin! I don't suppose you had anything to do with Toby's little contribution to Spencer's decision?"

"Not me," Hamish replied, and shrugged with a strained smile. "They're probably just giving us a little privacy." There was something odd about his tone, she thought, but before she had time to consider it he went on. "And, frankly, if that's what Toby was thinking, it was a damned good idea. Lord knows we can use it."

"Amen to that," she said fervently, and walked back into his arms.

They stood that way for quite some time, with Nimitz leaning forward from Honor's shoulder to rub his cheek against Samantha's. Then Honor straightened and stepped back with a ghost of a smile.

"It's all right, Mac," she called out, raising her voice slightly. "You can come out now."

Hamish made a sound which might someday turn into a chuckle again as James MacGuiness poked his head through the hatch from his steward's pantry.

"Hello, Mac," the earl said.

"Good afternoon, Milord," MacGuiness replied with all of his customary aplomb. "Might I offer you a little something?"

"Actually, you can offer me a glass of whiskey," Hamish said. "A rather large one. Some of Her Grace's Glenlivet Grand Reserve. And don't contaminate it with ice."

"Of course, Milord. And for you, Your Grace?"

"I think it's still a little early for me to start in on the whiskey," Honor said, with a thoughtful glance at Hamish. "Make it an Old Tilman, please."

MacGuiness bowed slightly and vanished back into his pantry, but only for a few seconds. How he got the specified beverages into their glasses that quickly, with a perfect head on her stein of beer, was simply fresh proof of his magical abilities, in Honor's opinion.

She took the beer with a small smile of thanks, and he smiled back, handed Hamish his whiskey, and disappeared once more. This time, the door closed quietly behind him.

Honor looked at Hamish, then waved her beer at the couch facing her coffee table. Hamish nodded in silent agreement, then sat, and she settled herself beside him. His arm went back around her, and he took a deep swallow from his glass before he leaned back, closed his eyes, and exhaled in a long, ragged sound of weariness she knew he would never have let anyone else hear.

Nimitz and Samantha had flowed onto the other end of the couch, where they were curled tightly together with Samantha's muzzle buried against Nimitz while he crooned to her and his true-hands caressed her long, silken coat.

The four of them sat that way for a time which could not possibly have been as long as it seemed, simply absorbing the comfort of the others' presence. But for all her joy at seeing him again, the dark thunderhead of his mind glow—and Samantha's—hammered at her empathic sense like a hurricane just beyond the horizon. The minutes stretched out, and then, finally, he took another pull at his drink and opened his eyes again.

"I need this," he said softly, and she knew he wasn't talking about the whiskey. "I can't believe how badly I need this. And Emily is going to need it, too, as soon as you can get dirtside on Manticore."

"I want to see her, too," Honor told him equally quietly. "But I don't think it's going to happen soon." He looked at her, and her smile was more crooked than usual. "Hamish, we're already taking advantage of our positions, just sitting here. I don't think anybody's going to complain, and I'm pretty sure we've got enough official business to discharge to keep us from feeling too guilty. But I'm not going to abuse my authority by cutting myself orders to Manticore or Sphinx to see my family when the rest of the people under my command can't do the same thing."

The darkness flared within him as she spoke. For a moment, she thought it was anger at her refusal to abuse the privileges of her rank, but its taste wasn't quite right for that. She was still trying to parse his emotions out when he shook his head.

"You won't have to cut yourself any orders, Honor," he said. "And it won't be a case of favoritism, either. Trust me, Elizabeth's going to want you on Manticore as fast as you can get there. She's going to want to hear how Pritchart and her people reacted to all this. And she's going to want your reaction to it, as well."

She started to object, then changed her mind. He was undoubtedly right, after all.

"I suppose that's fairly inevitable," she admitted instead, and he snorted.

"You can leave out the 'fairly,'" he told her, and she smiled briefly. But then her smile faded, and she set her untasted beer on the coffee table and reached out with her flesh-and-blood hand to touch the side of his face.

"All right," she said. "I take your point. And I won't even try to pretend I don't want to see Emily as badly as she wants to see me. Or as badly as I want to see the kids, for that matter. But I think you're forgetting I can taste mind glows, Hamish."

His eyes darkened, as if shutters had just come down behind them, and her fingers stroked his cheek gently.

"Whatever it is, you can't protect me from it forever," she said very softly.

"I—"

He stopped, looking into her face, then exhaled.

"I know," he said, and she tasted the pain behind the words, the realization that despite how desperately important to him she was, she was also only one of literally millions of people who couldn't be "protected from it forever." Not that realizing that kept him from wishing with all his heart and soul that he could.

"So tell me," she said.

He looked at her a moment longer. She felt him steel himself, felt him gathering himself the way both of them had gathered themselves as missiles began to fly and people under their command began to die.

"Debris from the strike on Vulcan got through to the planet," he said, and his voice was flat, harsh, the words quick and unflinching, offering her the stark honesty of one professional officer to another, now that the moment had finally come. "One of the tugs—the Quay— did her damnedest, but she couldn't catch it all. One of the strikes, a big one, probably up in the multi-hundred thousand-ton range," he looked straight into her eyes, "took out Yawata Crossing, Honor. The entire city."

Someone punched Honor squarely in the chest. She stared at him, literally unable for several seconds to process the information. Then she sucked in a deep, agonized breath, and he reached out to take her face between both his hands and leaned forward until their foreheads touched.

"All three of your aunts," he said, and his voice was soft, now, the voice of her lover and husband, shadowed with his own grief at inflicting this upon her. "Your Uncle Al was away on business, but Jason and Owen were both at home. So"—he inhaled deeply again—"were all the kids. And your cousin Devon, and his wife, and two of the children. Matthias and Frieda. Holly and Eric. Martha." He closed his eyes. "Al is all right—or as close to it as a man can be when his wife and kids are. . . And Devon's daughter Sarah, and your cousin Benedict and cousin Leah, were all away. But the rest were all there. It was your Aunt Claire's birthday, and . . . ."

His voice died, and tears trickled down Honor's cheeks as the list went on and on in her mind, adding the other names. All the names. The Harrington clan was a large one, but most of its members had always lived in and around Yawata Crossing, and family affairs—like birthdays—were important to them. They always gathered for moments like that, all of them who could, and she pictured them there, laughing and teasing the guest of honor as they always did. Her father's sisters, their husbands, their children—their grand children. Cousins and in-laws .

"I'm sorry, love," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

She tasted his love, his shared grief, the pain he felt for her pain and the special guilt he felt for having inflicted it upon her. She knew, now, what monster had ridden his shoulders . . . and why there'd been no mention of collateral damage to Sphinx in any of the official correspondence which had accompanied her recall. Hamish Alexander-Harrington was the First Lord of Admiralty, and whether it had been an abuse of his position or not hadn't really mattered to him. She was not going to learn about something like this through some cold letter or recorded message. No, he'd taken that crushing task upon himself, in person. She knew that now, just as she knew he wasn't done yet.

"Tell me the rest," she said, and her voice was just as harsh as his had been, ribbed with the steely selfcontrol fighting to hold back the darkness.

"Andrew and Miranda were taking Raoul to Claire's party," he said, and her heart seemed to stop. "Your dad and the twins were supposed to be there, too, but there'd been some kind of delay. They were in transit between Manticore and Sphinx when the attack hit. They came through it just fine, and Andrew, Raoul, and Lindsey had swung by your parents' place to pick up your mom. They hadn't gotten to Claire's yet, either, but Miranda—"

He shook his head, and she closed her eyes. Not Miranda, too, God , she prayed. Not Miranda, too!

She heard both 'cats keening their own lament, and a fresh spasm of anguish went through her.

Of course , she thought. Of course Farragut was with her. And no wonder Toby saw to it that Hamish and I could be alone when he told me .

"Andrew?" she heard her own voice ask. "Raoul and Mother?"

The look he gave her filled her with terror. Her own shocked grief and pain threatened to drown the universe, yet even through it, she tasted his mind glow. Knew he would rather have had his own heart ripped out than bring her this news.

"Raoul and your mother are fine," he said quickly, then made a harsh, ugly sound deep in his throat. "Well, as fine as they can be. But they were too close to the Yawata strike. Andrew got the two of them—and Lindsey—punched out in time, and they're all fine, although Lindsey came out of it with a badly broken collarbone. But—"

His hands slid down from her face, and his arms went back around her.

"He ran out of time, love," he whispered. "He got the three of them out, but he and Jeremiah were still in the limo when the blast front hit it."

Honor Alexander-Harrington had forgotten there could be that much pain in the universe. She knew it was a miracle her mother and her son had survived, and she knew she would never be able to express how unspeakably grateful she was for that incredible gift.

Yet that gift came at the price of a dark and personal agony, for it was the last gift, the last miracle, Andrew LaFollet would ever give her. And now, the last—and the most beloved—of her original Grayson armsmen was gone.

I made him Raoul's armsman to keep him safe. To keep him away from me, from the way people keep dying for me . The thought trickled through the tearing anguish. I tried. God, I tried to keep him safe .

But she'd failed. Even then, she knew it wasn't truly her fault, just as she knew that if Andrew had known exactly what was going to happen, he would have done exactly the same thing. That her armsman had died knowing precisely what he was doing and knowing he'd succeeded. That was something. In time, it might actually help her deal with this numbing sense of devastation, but not now. Not yet.

"Your mother insisted that all of them—including your father—go to White Haven, to be with Emily," Hamish's voice went on after a moment from the dark void which surrounded her. "That was her official argument, anyway. Mostly, though . . . Mostly, I think, it was an excuse to get your father away from Yawata Crossing. It wasn't as if there was anything they could have done there, Honor. Not after something like that."

"Of course not." She felt the tears flowing, and the guilt she'd felt before, the sense of failure, was a knife in her heart. "Mother was right. She usually is."

"I know," he said quietly, changing position to pull her face down against his shoulder while Nimitz and Samantha cuddled tightly against her.

"Somehow," she heard herself say, and the steel had gone out of her voice, replaced by dead, defeated flatness, "I never thought about this. Never worried about it—not really. I thought I had, but I know better now. I never really let myself think that it could have happened. That I could have let it happen."

"You didn't!" he said softly, fiercely. "There wasn't one, solitary damned thing you could have done to stop this Honor."

"But we should have. We were supposed to. It's our job , Hamish, and what use are we if we can't even do our jobs?"

Hamish Alexander-Harrington heard the grief, the pain, in that dead soprano voice, and he understood it. Better than he'd ever understood anything in his life, in that moment, he understood exactly what his wife was feeling, for he'd felt it himself. But his arms tightened around her, and he shook his head hard.

"You aren't thinking a single thing I haven't already thought," he told her. "If it was anyone's 'job,' Honor, it was the Admiralty's. So, trust me, love, there's not one single, ugly, hateful thing you can think about yourself that I haven't already thought about myself. But we're both wrong. Yes, keeping this from happening is what our lives have been about ever since we put on the uniform. But you weren't even here when it happened, and nobody saw it coming. Nobody was asleep at the switch, Honor. Nobody ignored anything. Every damned one of us did our jobs, exactly the way we were supposed to, and this time, it just wasn't enough. Somebody got past us because they came at us in a way no one could have predicted."

She stiffened in his embrace, and even without her own empathic ability, he could literally feel her effort to reject what he'd just said, to continue to punish herself. But he wouldn't let go—not with his arms, not with the fierce embrace of his heart. He held her ruthlessly, knowing she could feel what he felt, knowing she couldn't escape his love.

For a long, long moment the tension held, and then she sagged against him, and he felt the deep, almost silent sobs shuddering through her. He closed his eyes again, holding her against himself, cradling her in his arms and his love.

He never really knew, later, how long they sat there. It seemed to last forever, yet finally, she shifted slightly, pillowing her head on his shoulder, and he tugged a handkerchief from his pocket and dried her eyes.

"Better?" he asked very quietly.

"Some," she replied, although she wasn't at all certain that was actually the truth. "Some."

"I'm sorry, love," he said again, softly.

"I know." She patted the arm still around her gently. "I know."

There was another long moment of silence, and then she inhaled deeply and sat up straight.

"I'll miss them," she told her husband, and her voice remained soft, but her eyes were not. They glittered, still bright with tears, yet there was a darkness beneath that glitter, a hardness beneath those tears.

Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring" spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back.

But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances.

And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met.

In fact, at this moment, she was .

It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not—could not—relent or rest.

"I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget, and one day—one day, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them."