Yet Abigail had weathered the storm. Honor had made it quietly clear to her that, as the only steadholder within light-years, she felt a certain special responsibility to make herself available as counselor and mentor to all Grayson midshipmen. Which was true, but which (as she had not said) was particularly true in the case of the single Grayson midshipwoman on the island. Abigail had thanked her and, once or twice, availed herself of the offer, seeking advice or guidance, particularly in social situations. But she was scarcely alone in that, and none of her classmates had felt it was any sign of a "teacher's pet" mentality.
Honor was glad, and not just for Abigail's sake. The young woman had turned out to have a pronounced flair for tactics, and unlike Honor, she was a whiz at math. She was a bit hesitant about exerting her authority in training situations, which was hardly surprising in a young woman reared in the Grayson tradition. But her performance was acceptable even there, and it helped that she was a steadholder's daughter. Traditional Grayson women might not compete in what custom had hallowed as male occupations, but a steadholder's daughter was accustomed to wielding an authority few less nobly born women could expect to possess.
Pleased as Honor was to see a female Grayson at the Academy, however, that wasn't the reason she'd invited Abigail tonight. Invitations to Duchess Harrington's thrice-a-week dinners were handed out on two bases. Every student in any of her classes would receive at least one invitation, which was one reason the number of midshipmen present at any dinner hovered at around twenty and sometimes rose as high as twenty-five. Additional invitations had to be earned on the basis of academic performance, however, and Abigail Hearns was well up in the top third of repeat attendees.
It still bemused Honor that there was such fierce competition for places at the Admiral's table. She was quite prepared to take advantage of it to inspire her students to greater heights, but her own Academy experience had been that most middies would go to considerable lengths to avoid being trapped alone with any flag officer. In the infrequent instances in which beings of that exalted rank also taught (which was more common in the RMN than in almost any other navy, but remained vanishingly rare), the old adage about "out of sight, out of mind" operated powerfully in a middy's thought processes. But the jockeying for the relatively low number of slots in the sections Honor had been assigned had been intense from the outset, and that clearly carried over to the winning of her dinner invitations.
Even knowing what they would face after the dishes were cleared away.
She suppressed a fresh grin at the thought. It was unheard of for mere midshipmen to find themselves face-to-face with instructors from the rarified heights of the Advanced Tactical Course. Aside from the middies themselves, Andrea Jaruwalski, a full commander, was the most junior officer in the room, and those hectares of gold braid and gleaming planets and stars had not been invited solely for their dinner conversation. In fact, Lady Harrington's dinner parties were some of the most rugged instances of small group instruction in Saganami Island's history, and the surprising thing was the eagerness she sensed around her as the youngsters braced themselves for what they all knew was about to come.
MacGuiness reappeared to check her cocoa mug, and she smiled up at him.
"I think we're about done, Mac. Please tell Mistress Thorn her dinner was as delicious as always."
"Of course, Your Grace," he murmured.
"And I think we'll move this into the game room," she went on, pushing her chair back and rising. The prosthetic arm still felt heavy and unnatural on her left side after all this time, but it was becoming steadily less so, and her students had grown accustomed to seeing it. They were used to its occasional random twitches during her lectures, but they also seemed to have boned up on the prosthesis enough to know about the software overrides. None of her guests had turned a hair at the obvious mobility limits she'd set for the evening, at any rate, and she suppressed a small chuckle at the thought of their tact as she slipped the arm from its sling long enough to lift Nimitz very carefully with both hands.
His surgery had been even more successful than hers — where simple muscle, bone, and tendon were involved, at least — and he was rapidly regaining the smooth, flowing mobility of old as long-disused muscles built back up. The taste of his simple joy as he regained his full natural range of movement had almost brought tears to Honor's eyes, and she knew how much pleasure he took from using that movement. But he shared with her a very deep and even more profound joy in her ability to pick him up with two hands once more, and his muzzle pressed firmly into her left cheek and his purr vibrated into her very bones as she set him properly upon her shoulder once more.
Samantha hopped down to trot beside them, then looked up with a happy, buzzing purr of her own as Jaruwalski stooped and scooped her up.
Honor smiled her thanks at the commander and, followed even here by Andrew LaFollet, led the way into the mansion's enormous game room. It had become the center for her post-dinner confabs, and she'd had some rather different "gaming" equipment moved in. Four compact but complete simulator stations had been constructed, each duplicating a scaled-down command deck. Compact though they were, they put a decided squeeze on the space of any room, even one this size, but none of her guests complained. Those simulators were the real reason for their visit here, and those who'd been here before hurried to claim favorite seats among the chairs and small couches crowded together to make room for the simulators. None of them went anywhere near Honor's personal chair beside the huge stone hearth (which had probably never had a fire on it in its entire existence, given the semitropical climate), but every other place was up for grabs. Not that a midshipman was going to argue with a captain or an admiral who had his or her eye set on a given seat, of course.
"So, Ladies and Gentlemen," she said to the middies after everyone had settled. "Have you given some thought to the point I posed in class?"
There was silence for a moment, then one midshipman raised his hand.
"Yes, Mr. Gillingham? You wished to start the ball rolling?"
"I guess so, Ma'am," Midshipman Gillingham said wryly. His voice was surprisingly deep for someone of his physical age and wiry build, and he spoke with the flattened vowels of a strong Alizon accent.
"Someone has to," Honor agreed, smiling at his tone. "And you get extra points for courage for volunteering so eagerly."
Several of Gillingham's classmates chuckled, and the young man grinned back at her... respectfully, of course.
"Thank you, Ma'am," he said. Then his grin faded into a more serious expression and he cleared his throat. "The thing that bothered me just a little, Ma'am," he went on diffidently, "was when you said there's no such thing as a real surprise in combat."
"That's a slight oversimplification," Honor corrected. "What I said was that given modern sensor capabilities, the possibility that anyone can slip one starship into combat range of another undetected is remote. Under those circumstances, `surprise' usually means not that one opponent truly failed to see what was coming, but rather that she simply misinterpreted what she saw."
"Yes, Ma'am. But what if one side really doesn't see it coming?"
Another hand went up, and Honor glanced at its owner.
"Yes, Ms. Hearns? You wanted to add something?"
"Yes, My Lady." No one raised an eyebrow at Hearn's form of address, despite the tradition that any senior officer was simply "Sir" or "Ma'am" to any middy. Knighthoods and peerages were important, but no one expected mere midshipmen to keep who was what straight. The tradition wasn't ironbound, however, and there wasn't a Grayson on Manticore, middy or not, who would have dreamed of addressing Honor by any other title.