She watched them come closer, and Nimitz stirred uneasily in her lap. She reached out through her link to him and winced as a fist seemed to punch her in the face. Shed felt fear to match the POWs often enough, but never such bleak, helpless, terrible fury. The emotion storm was so ferocious she almost expected to see one of them burst into spontaneous flameor at least turn to charge Mayhew and LaFollet in a berserk suicide attackbut they had themselves too well in hand for that. And perhaps there was another reason beyond self-discipline, for even through their seething rage, she felt a tiny edge of something else. Uncertainty, perhaps. Or curiosity. Something, at any rate, which whispered to them that what was happening might not, in fact, be what they had assumed it must be.
They reached the top of the hill and paused suddenly, stock still as they saw Honor and Nimitz. The two of them looked at one another, and the woman said something too low for Honor to hear, but she felt that spark of curiosity flaring higher, and realized it was the sight of Nimitz which had fanned it. Mayhew said something to her in reply, his tone courteous but insistent, and they shook themselves back into motion and walked straight to her.
She gathered Nimitz up in the crook of her arm and stood, and she felt another, stronger flash of shock and curiosity snap through them as they stepped under the shade of her tree and stopped, staring at her from a distance of three or four meters. Then the woman shook herself and cocked her head to the side.
"Who are you people?" she asked in a soft, wondering tone.
Standard English had been the interstellar language of humanity from the earliest days of the Diaspora. It had become that almost inevitably, for it had been the international language of Old Earth and had been carried to the other bodies of the Sol System long before it left them for the stars. Many worlds and even star nations spoke other languages among their own citizensGerman in the Anderman Empire, for example, or Spanish on San Martin, French on New Dijon, Chinese and Japanese on Ki-Rin and Nagasaki, and Hebrew in the Judean Leaguebut every educated human being spoke Standard English. And, for the most part, electronic recordings and the printed word had kept its pronunciation close enough from world to world for it to be a truly universal language. But Honor had to concentrate hard to follow this womans mushy accent. Shed never heard one quite like it, and she wondered what the others native tongue was. But she couldnt let it distract her, and so she drew herself up to her full height and nodded to them.
"My name is Harrington," she told them calmly. "Commodore Harrington, Royal Manticoran Navy."
"Royal Manticoran Navy?" This time the womans voice was sharp, and Honor felt a fresh stab of angerand scornas the blondes eyes dropped to the black StateSec trousers Honor wore. "Sure you are," she said after a moment, gray eyes hard.
"Yes, I am," Honor replied in the same calm tones. "And whatever you may be thinking, clothes dont necessarily make the woman. Im afraid weve had to make do for uniforms with what we could, ah, liberate, as it were."
The other woman looked at her in hard-eyed silence for several more seconds, and then, suddenly, her eyebrows rose in an expression of shock.
"Wait. You said Harrington. Are you Honor Harrington?" she demanded harshly, and it was Honors turn to blink in consternation.
"I was the last time I looked," she said cautiously. She looked past the newcomers at Mayhew, one eyebrow quirked, but the Grayson lieutenant only shook his head.
"My God," the woman muttered, then turned back to the man. He returned her stare without comment, then shrugged and raised both hands palm uppermost.
"May I ask how you happen to know my first name?" Honor asked after a moment, and the woman wheeled back around to face her.
"A couple of dozen Manty prisoners got dumped in my last camp just before the Black Legs sent me to Inferno," she said slowly, narrow eyes locked on Honors face. "They had a lot to say about youif youre really the Honor Harrington they were talking about. Said you took out a Peep battlecruiser with a heavy cruiser before the war even started, then ripped hell out of a Peep task force at someplace called Hancock. And they said" her eyes darted to Nimitz "that you had some strange kind of pet." She stopped and cocked her head aggressively. "That you?"
"Allowing for a little exaggeration in the telling, Id say yes," Honor replied even more cautiously. It had never occurred to her that anyone on this planet had ever heard of her, and she was unprepared for the fierce, exultant enthusiasm her name seemed to have waked within the stern-faced blonde. "I wasnt in command at HancockI was Admiral Sarnows flag captainand I had a lot of help dealing with the battlecruiser. And Nimitz isnt my pet. But, yes. I think Im the one youre talking about."
"Damn," the woman whispered. "Damn! I sure as hell knew he wasnt from any evolutionary line on this planet!" But then her exultation faded, and her face turned cold and bitter. "So the bastards got you, too," she half-snarled.
"Yes, and no," Honor replied. "As you may have noticed, were a little better equipped than you people seem to be." LaFollet had joined her while she and the other woman were speaking, and she handed him Nimitz and then took the lashed-together spears from him. She weighed them in her hand a moment, then passed them back to her armsman and tapped the butt of her holstered pulser, but she was unprepared for the other womans reaction.
"Oh my God, you hit one of them, did you?" she demanded in a tone of raw horror.
"Hit one of them?" Honor repeated.
"Hit one of the supply shuttles," the other woman said harshly, and the horror in her faceand emotionshad turned accusing.
"No, we havent hit one of the supply shuttles," Honor replied.
"Oh, sure," the blonde said. "You found the guns growing wild in the woods!"
"No, we took these from the Peeps," Honor told her calmly. "But we took them before we ever hit atmosphere." Both newcomers were staring at her now, as if at a lunatic, and the living side of her mouth smiled grimly. "Did either of you happen to see a rather large explosion up there about five T-months ago?" she asked, and jerked her thumb at the sky, invisible beyond the tree branches.
"Yeah," the blonde said very slowly, drawing the word out, and her eyes were narrow again. "Matter of fact, we saw quite a few of em. Why?"
"Because that was us arriving," Honor said dryly. LaFollet shifted beside her, and she felt his unhappiness. He didnt want her telling these strangers so much about them so quickly, but Honor only touched him on the shoulder. He stilled his fidgeting, and she gave him a brief smile. Unless she decided that she could trust these twofullythen they would be returning to the hidden shuttles with her and her companions, at gunpoint if necessary. But for now, she had to convince them she was telling the truth, because if she didnt, they would never trust her, which meant she would never be able to trust them.
"You?" the woman asked, brow furrowing in disbelief, and she nodded.
"Us. The Peeps captured us in the Adler System and turned us over to StateSec to ship out here. Their plans included hanging me on arrival, but some of my people had... other ideas."
"Ideas?" the blonde parroted, and Honor nodded again.