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# Chapter Twenty-Six

The G6 star at the heart of the Marsh System was a thoroughly average system primary. Nothing much to write home about, Honor thought, leaning against the bulkhead beside the armorplast viewport as she gazed out into the dark, diamond-dusted clarity. Just one more insignificant furnace in which the fires of creation blazed with inconceivable fury, shedding their stupendous glory down the halls of God's endless night.

Certainly not anything important enough for the Star Kingdom of Manticore to risk a war over.

She snorted, and tasted Nimitz's echo of her own dark moodiness from where he reclined on the perch beside his bulkhead-mounted life support module. Of course, she also knew that the somberness they shared sprang from more than her awareness of the all but impossible task she faced here. For the 'cat, it was the loneliness, the separation from his mate. But that was a separation Nimitz and Samantha had endured before, and would again, and at least he and Honor had one another, while Samantha had Hamish. Both 'cats knew this was one of the inevitable prices of their bonds with their humans, and in its own way, that knowledge was a form of armor. It didn't lessen the pangs of their separation—a separation which was far worse for empaths than for the "mind-blind"—but at least both of them knew exactly how vital they were to one another . . . and that they would be together once again at deployment's end.

Which was far more than Honor knew. She deeply regretted separating Nimitz and Samantha, and her regret carried a strong overtone of guilt, yet deep inside, she couldn't quite stifle an ignoble envy, almost jealousy. However much the two 'cats might miss one another now, their separation would come to an end. Honor's wouldn't. She knew that, but at least this empty, lonely ache at the heart of her was better than the pain and hopeless longing she'd felt before she put distance between her and Hamish. She told herself that at least a dozen times a day, and for the most part, she believed herself.

For the most part.

She turned her head, letting her gaze sweep over the nearest ships of her gathered task force. They floated in orbit about the planet Sidemore, the space-going equivalent of a fleet anchored in a safe harbor, but she'd been pleased when she arrived to find that Rear Admiral Hewitt had insisted upon maintaining a heightened state of readiness. All of his vessels' parking orbits had been carefully arranged to avoid any problems with wedge interference if it was necessary to bring up their impellers quickly. And he'd also seen to it that at least one of his battle squadrons' impeller nodes had been hot at all times. The ready duty rotated among his squadrons on a regular basis, but his precaution meant that its units could bring up their wedges in as little as thirty to forty-five minutes.

Honor had not only told him how much she approved of his wariness but also maintained and extended his standing orders, including the dispersal of their orbits, to the units of Task Force Thirty-Four, as well. Which meant, of course, that even ships as stupendous as Werewolf or Alister McKeon's superdreadnought flagship Troubadour were the tiniest of models when she gazed at them with the naked eye.

Of course, not all naked eyes had been created equal, and Honor smiled despite her moodiness as she brought up the telescopic function of her artificial left eye and the distant, floating mountains of battle steel grew and blossomed magically.

They hung there in the void, like killer whales in an endless sea of dark kelp, spangled with the green and white lights of starships in orbit, their flanks dotted with the precise geometry of weapon bays or LAC launch tubes. There were dozens of them, huge capital ships, pregnant with firepower and destruction and awaiting her orders. With the reinforcements she'd brought out from Manticore, she had eight full battle squadrons, plus Alice's understrength CLAC squadron, screened by five battlecruiser squadrons, three light cruiser squadrons, and two destroyer flotillas . . . which didn't even count the dozens of cruisers and destroyers scattered through the nearer sections of the Confederacy on anti-pirate duties. She had no less than forty-two ships of the wall under her command, which made her "task force" a fleet in all but name. It was also far and away the most powerful force which had ever been placed under her orders, and as she gazed out the viewport at the might and power ready to her fingertips, she supposed she ought to feel confident in the strength of her weapon if she should be called upon to use it.

Yet what she really was was aware of its flaws.

She couldn't fault the readiness state which Hewitt had maintained during his time on the station any more than she could fault the cheerfulness with which he'd surrendered his authority to her upon her arrival. Alister and Alice had managed to sharpen Task Force Thirty-Four to a far keener edge than she'd allowed herself to hope for during the voyage here, and Hewitt's squadrons had managed to maintain a far higher degree of readiness than Home Fleet. No doubt because his captains, like he himself, had been altogether too well aware of how far from any other help they'd be if it hit the fan out here in Silesia.

But all the readiness in the galaxy couldn't change the fact that only six of her forty-two ships of the wall were Medusa-class SD(P)s and none of them were the even newer Invictus-class ships. Or that eleven of the others were mere dreadnoughts, scarcely two-thirds the size and fighting power of even her older, pre-SD(P) ships. She had no doubt Janacek and High Ridge would roll the number forty-two out in suitably weighty tones for the benefit of any newsy or member of Parliament who asked pointed questions about the state of Sidemore Station. And she had just as little doubt that neither of them would mention just how obsolescent and undersized some of those forty-two ships were. Or that she had been allowed only four of the eight CLACs she'd requested. Or that ONI's most recent estimate gave the Imperial Andermani Navy something in excess of two hundred ships of the wall.

She inhaled deeply, then straightened up, squared her shoulders, and scolded herself for allowing herself to fall into a slough of despond. She'd known when she accepted the posting that this was exactly what was going to happen, although, to be honest, she hadn't anticipated that even Janacek would be quite so blatant as to assign every single Manticoran dreadnought still in commission to her. But even if he'd replaced every one of them with pre-pod superdreadnoughts, her strength would still have been totally inadequate if the Andies truly were willing to push things to the brink of outright hostilities. So it probably made sense, from Janacek's viewpoint, to pile as many as possible of his obsolescent assets into the same heap. After all, if he lost them, it wouldn't be as if anything vital had gone with them. Except, of course, for the people aboard them.

She scolded herself again, although a bit less forcefully. She really should be careful about imputing sordid motives to the First Lord. Not because she doubted that he had them, but because not even Sir Edward Janacek could have only sordid motivations. That would have completely devalued his ability to do such things out of simple stupidity, instead of calculation.

Her lips quirked in a smile, and she surprised herself by producing a chuckle. It was a small one, true, but it was also born of genuine amusement, and she felt Nimitz's flicker of shared amusement. And his gladness that she could at least still laugh.

She let her eyes sweep over the panorama beyond the viewport once again, ordering herself to let the infinite beauty of God's jewel box sweep through her like a cleansing breeze. The silent, pinprick glory of the endless stars blazed before her, and the blue-and-white, cloud-swirled beauty of Sidemore filled the lower quarter of the port. With her cybernetic eye, she could make out the floating gems of the planet's orbital solar power collectors, and the smaller reflections of communications relays, orbital sensor arrays, and all of the other clutter of an industrialized presence in space.

None of those things had been here when she'd first visited Marsh almost ten T-years ago. Then, Sidemore had been a backwater, a place merchant ships visited only by mistake, and thus the perfect hideout base for the brutal "privateers" who had taken it over. Thirty-one thousand of Sidemore's citizens had died during that occupation, over a third of them in a single, horrific instant when Andre Warnecke detonated his demonstration nuke as a mere bargaining ploy. But that wasn't going to happen again, she thought with deep satisfaction. Even if the RMN pulled out tomorrow, the Sidemore Navy would make mincemeat out of any privateer or pirate stupid enough to poke his nose into this system again.

Sidemore wasn't in the same league as Grayson, but Honor was honest enough to admit that that was at least partly because Sidemore had never been as important to Manticore as Grayson was. The Star Kingdom had pulled out all the stops to build Grayson into the industrial powerhouse it had become, and for all the crudity of its pre-Alliance tech base, Grayson had been aggressively dragging itself up by its own bootstraps for well over sixty years before Manticore ever arrived in its neighborhood. And much as Honor loved her adopted planet and respected the industry and determination of its people, she was also honest enough to admit that it had been only Grayson's astrographic position which had attracted the Star Kingdom's notice in the first place.

Which was also true for Sidemore. But Grayson had been seen as essential to Manticoran security; Sidemore had simply been a convenience. And so Sidemore hadn't received the same loan guarantees, or been the subject of the same investment incentives and tax breaks, or been the site of major shipyards, as Grayson had been. Which, in its way, made what the Sidemorians had achieved even more impressive, despite how modest it appeared in the shadow of Grayson's accomplishments.

Honor was delighted to see the unmistakable signs of a planet whose industrialization process had taken on a self-sustaining life of its own. There were freighters building in Sidemore orbit these days, not just the light warships of the Sidemore Navy, and the planetary president had already conducted Honor on a proud tour of the planet's new orbital resource extraction facilities and smelters. Those facilities had grown almost entirely out of the RMN's need for them to support the orbital repair yard it had built here to service its ships on Sidemore Station, but they'd become self-perpetuating since then. The Marsh System wasn't going to be posing any threats to the Manticoran balance of payments with Silesia any time soon, but Honor was delighted to see how shrewdly and successfully the planet was exploiting its new industrial power by expanding into the Silesian trade. Unless something very unfortunate happened—like a war which brought the Andermani navy rampaging through the system—Sidemore would be able to sustain its new prosperity and expand upon it even if Manticore withdrew from the region.

And that's the only way we are ever going to turn the Confederacy into something besides an ongoing, low-level bloodbath, Honor thought with a touch of grimness. God knows we've tried to exterminate the pirates long enough! The only way to get rid of them in the end, though, is going to be by giving the people who live here the prosperity that'll create the capacity to squash the vermin themselves.

It's a pity the Confederacy's government is too corrupt to let that happen.

And that, she knew, as much as Manticore's interest in the system and the industriousness of its people, was why Marsh was succeeding in turning itself into a modern, prosperous star system. There were no Silesian governors to batten on the opportunities for graft and corruption and strangle any sustained industrial expansion at birth.

None of which, she reminded herself briskly, had any particular bearing on the task which had brought her back to Marsh after all these years.

She turned her back on the viewport and headed for her desk. She had entirely too many reports waiting for her. Mercedes had flagged the most important dozen or so for her attention, but Honor was still behind in her reading, and Mercedes was altogether too capable of making her feel intolerably guilty just by looking reproachfully at her. Honor suspected she'd been taking Reproachful 101 lessons from James MacGuiness. And since she'd scheduled a meeting of the entire task force's staffs for this afternoon, it would probably be a good idea to give her chief of staff one less reason to employ The Look.

She chuckled again and punched up the first report in the queue.

* * *

"Excuse me, Ma'am."

Honor looked up from the letter to Howard Clinkscales she'd been recording as James MacGuiness appeared in the open hatch of her day cabin.

"Yes, Mac? What can I do for you?"

"Lieutenant Meares asked me to inform you that a merchant captain just screened the com center with a request to make a courtesy call on you."

"Really?" Honor frowned thoughtfully. Timothy Meares, her flag lieutenant, was a bit on the youthful side, but he'd very early shown the good sense of accepting MacGuiness's assistance in managing his Admiral. Among other things, Meares had quickly grasped that MacGuiness usually had a better idea than anyone else aboard Werewolf of how busy Honor actually was at any given moment, and the flag lieutenant had come to trust the steward's judgment about when and whether or not to interrupt her with some routine matter.

He'd also recognized the fact that Honor expected him to use his own discretion about those same routine matters, and he had a somewhat more exalted opinion of her importance than she herself did. Which made the fact that he'd passed the request along to MacGuiness at all informative. Obviously, there was some reason he hadn't seen fit to reject this particular captain's attempt to invite himself to dinner—figuratively speaking, of course—out of hand. At the same time, he'd passed it along through the filter of MacGuiness, which suggested that perhaps he'd wondered if an older and wiser head who'd been with Honor much longer than he had might decide to quash it.

If that had been his intention, MacGuiness clearly hadn't opted to do any quashing, and she felt her initial prick of curiosity grow into something stronger as she reached out to taste the steward's emotions. He radiated a combination of anticipation, curiosity of his own, minor trepidation, and an echo of something which wasn't quite amusement.

"May I ask if this merchant captain said who he is and why he wants to see me?" she asked after a moment.

"I understand, Ma'am, that he's a Manticoran national, although he's been here in the Confederacy for many years now. According to my information, he's managed to acquire ownership of a small but extremely successful shipping line. In fact, he holds a special warrant from the Confederacy to permit his vessels to be armed, and Lieutenant Meares tells me that our records indicate that he's destroyed at least a dozen pirate vessels we know about over the past ten T-years. As to precisely why he wants to see you, all he's actually told the Lieutenant is that he'd like to pay a courtesy call on you. I believe, however, that the Lieutenant suspects that the good captain has come across some sort of local information which he believes it would be beneficial to share with you."

Nothing could have been blander than MacGuiness's expression or tone, but that edge of not-quite-amusement was stronger than ever as he regarded her gravely. And, she noted, his sense of trepidation had grown in direct parallel.

"That's all enormously interesting, Mac," she told him with a twinkle of moderate severity. "It didn't exactly answer my first question, though. I would imagine this mystery skipper has a name?"

"Oh, of course, Ma'am. Did I forget to mention it?"

"No," she told him. "You didn't 'forget' anything. You chose not to tell me because that curiously twisted faculty which serves you as a sense of humor told you not to."

He grinned as her shot went home, then shrugged just a bit too casually.

"You have a naturally suspicious personality, Ma'am," he told her in virtuous tones. "As it happens, however, the gentleman does have a name. I believe it's . . . Bachfisch. Thomas Bachfisch."

"Captain Bachfisch?" Honor jerked bolt upright in her chair, and Nimitz's head snapped up where he reclined on his bulkhead perch. "Here?"

"Yes, Ma'am." MacGuiness's grin had vanished, and he nodded seriously. "Lieutenant Meares didn't recognize the name. I did."

"Captain Bachfisch," she repeated softly, and shook her head. "I can't believe it. Not after all this time."

"I've heard you speak of him," MacGuiness told her quietly. "According to Lieutenant Meares, he sounded a bit hesitant about asking to see you, but I felt certain you wouldn't want this opportunity to slip away."

"You're certainly right about that!" she said firmly, then cocked her head. "But you said he sounded 'hesitant' about asking to call on me?"

"That was the way Lieutenant Meares put it, Ma'am," MacGuiness replied. "I'm sure the com section has the actual request on record, if you'd care to view it, but I haven't seen it myself."

"Hesitant," Honor repeated and felt an obscure sort of pain somewhere deep down inside. Then she shook herself. "Well, he may be hesitant, but I'm not! Tell Tim that his request is approved, and that I'll see the Captain at his earliest convenience."

"Yes, Ma'am," MacGuiness acknowledged, and disappeared as quietly as he had come, leaving Honor to her thoughts.

* * *

He's aged, Honor thought, hiding a pang of dismay as the stoop-shouldered man in the blue uniform swung himself across the interface from the boarding tube's zero-gee into the boat bay gallery's standard single gravity. She'd checked Werewolf's copy of the officers' list and found Bachfisch's name on it. Her old captain was a full admiral now, but solely because seniority continued to accrue even on half-pay, because that was precisely where he'd been for almost forty years. Forty hard years, she thought as she gazed at him. The dark hair she remembered was liberally laced with silver, despite his first-generation prolong, and Nimitz shifted ever so slightly on her shoulder, uneasy as both of them tasted the sense of pain and loss which flowed through him as he found himself once again upon a Queen's ship.

"Pirate's Bane, arriving!" the boat bay intercom system announced crisply, and the side party came to attention as the bosun's pipes shrilled in formal salute.

The dark eyes widened in surprise, and the shoulders squared themselves. That pain and loss intensified almost unbearably for just a moment, then turned into something far warmer. Not gratitude, although that was part of it, so much as understanding. An awareness of exactly why Honor had chosen to extend full formal military courtesies to a mere merchant skipper, whatever his half-pay rank might be. He came to full attention and saluted the junior-grade lieutenant boat bay officer at the head of the side party.

"Permission to come aboard, Ma'am?" he requested formally.

"Permission granted, Sir," she replied, snapping him a parade ground-sharp salute of her own, and Rafe Cardones stepped forward to greet him.

"Welcome aboard Werewolf, Admiral Bachfisch," Honor's flag captain said, extending his hand.

"That's 'Captain Bachfisch,' Captain," Bachfisch corrected him quietly. "But thank you." He shook Cardones' hand firmly. "She's a beautiful ship," he went on sincerely, but his eyes looked over Cardones' shoulder at Honor, and the emotions swirling through him were too intense and complicated for her to sort out.

"Thank you," Cardones told him. "I'm rather proud of her myself, and if you can spare the time, I'd be delighted to take you on the five-dollar tour before you return to your own ship."

"That's very kind of you. And if it's at all possible, I'll certainly take you up on it. I've heard a lot about this class, but this is the first opportunity I've had to actually see one."

"Then I'll see if our COLAC, Captain Tremaine, can accompany us," Cardones promised. "He'll be able to give you the LAC jock's viewpoint, as well."

"I'll look forward to it," Bachfisch assured him, still looking at Honor, and Cardones smiled just a bit crookedly and stepped back to make room for his Admiral.

"Captain Bachfisch," she said softly, reaching out her own hand. "It's good to see you again, Sir."

"And you . . . Your Grace." He smiled, and there was an entire universe of satisfaction and regret behind that expression. "You've done well. Or so I hear." His smile grew broader, losing some of its hurt.

"I had a good teacher," she told him, squeezing his hand firmly, and he shrugged.

"A teacher is only as good as his students, Your Grace."

"Let's just say it was a joint effort, Sir," she said, relinquishing his hand at last, and nodded her head at Cardones. "And let me repeat Captain Cardones' welcome. I hope you'll be good enough to join us for supper and allow me to introduce you to the rest of my senior officers?"

"Your Grace, you're very kind, but I wouldn't want to impose, and—"

"The only imposition would be for you to decline the invitation, Sir," Honor interrupted firmly. "I haven't seen you in almost forty T-years. You're not getting off the ship without dining with me and my officers."

"Is that an order, Your Grace?" he asked wryly, and she nodded.

"It most certainly is," she told him, and he shrugged.

"In that case, of course, I accept."

"Good. I see you still have a firm grasp of the tactical realities, Sir."

"I try," he said with another small smile.

"In that case, why don't you accompany me to my day cabin?" she invited. "We have a lot of catching up to do before supper."

"Indeed we do, Your Grace," he agreed softly, and followed her into the lift car, while Andrew LaFollet trailed along behind.

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