He snorted to himself at the direction of his thoughts while he listened with a minuscule fraction of his attention to the earbug in his left ear that brought him the chatter between the boat bay control officer and the pinnace maneuvering towards rendezvous with his flagship. His mind had always tended to drift through contemplative deeps whenever it had nothing specific with which to occupy itself, but it had been doing it even more frequently than usual of late.
He turned his head to watch the Marine honor guard moving into position. Those Marines comported themselves with all the precision he could have desired, but they wore the brown and green uniforms of Grayson, not the black and green of Manticore, for the superdreadnought Benjamin the Great �known informally (and out of her captain�s hearing) to her crew as "Benjy"�was a Grayson ship. Barely a T-year old, she was quite possibly the most powerful warship in existence. She certainly had been when she�d been completed, but warship standards were changing with bewildering speed. After the better part of seven centuries of gradual, incremental�one might even say glacial�evolution, the entire concept of just what made an effective ship of war had been cast back into the melting pot, and no one seemed entirely certain what would emerge from the crucible in time. All they knew was that the comfortable assurance of known weapons and known tactics and known strategies were about to be replaced by something new and different which might all too easily invalidate all their hard won skill and competence.
And no one outside the Alliance even seems to suspect the way things are changing... yet, he thought moodily, turning back to the still, sterile perfection of the boat bay.
A part of him wished the Alliance hadn�t thought of it either, although it would never do to admit that. Actually, he�d come close to admitting it once, he reminded himself�at least by implication. But Lady Harrington had ripped a strip off his hide for it, and he�d deserved it.
As always, something twisted deep inside him, like a physical pain, at the fleeting thought of Honor Harrington, and he cursed his traitor memory. It had always been excellent. Now it insisted on replaying every time he and she had ever met�every time he�d counseled her, or chewed her out (though there�d been few of those), or watched her drag what was left of herself home after one of those stupid, gutsy, glorious goddamned attempts to get herself killed in the name of duty, and she�d never been stupid, so why the hell had she insisted on doing that when she must have known that if she kept going back to the well over and over, sooner or later even the Peeps would get lucky, and�
He jerked his mind out of the well-worn rut, but not before the dull burn of raw anger had boiled up inside him once again. It was stupid�he knew it was�yet he was furious with her for dying, and some deeply irrational part of him blamed her for it... and refused to forgive her even now, over eight T-months later.
He sighed and closed his blue eyes as the pain and anger washed back through him yet again, and another part of him sneered contemptuously at his own emotions. Of course he blamed her for it. If he didn�t, he�d have to blame himself, and he couldn�t have that, now could he?
He opened his eyes once more, and his jaw clenched as he made himself face it. He�d known Honor Harrington for nine and a half years, from the day he�d first met her right here in this very system... and watched her take a heavy cruiser on a death-ride straight into the broadside of a battlecruiser to defend someone else�s planet. For all that time, he�d known she was probably the most outstanding junior officer he had ever met, bar none, yet that was all she�d been to him. Or so he�d thought until that night she stood in the library of Harrington House and jerked him up so short his ears had rung. She�d actually had the gall to tell him his rejection of the Weapons Development Board�s new proposals was just as knee-jerk and automatic as the autoresponse pattern in favor of any new proposal which he�d always loathed in the jeune ecole. And she�d been right. That was what had hit him so hard. She�d had the nerve to call him on it, and she�d been right.
And in the stunned, half-furious moment in which he�d realized that, he�d also looked at her and seen someone else. Someone very different from the outstanding junior officer whose career he had shepherded because it was the responsibility of senior officers to develop the next generation of their replacements. Much as he�d respected her, deeply and genuinely as he�d admired her accomplishments, she�d always been just that: his junior officer. Someone to be nurtured and instructed and groomed and developed for higher command. Possibly even someone who would surpass all his own achievements... someday.
But that evening in the library, he�d suddenly realized "someday" had come. She�d still technically been his junior�in Manticoran service, at least; her rank in the Grayson Navy had been another matter entirely�but that comfortable sense that there would always be more for him to teach her, more for her to learn from him, had been demolished and he�d seen her as his equal.
And that had killed her.
His jaw muscles ridged and the ice-blue eyes reflected in the clear armorplast burned as he made himself face the truth at last. It was hardly the time or place for it, but he seemed to have made a habit out of picking the wrong times and places to realize things about Honor Harrington, hadn�t he? And conveniently timed or not, it was true; it had killed her.
He still didn�t know what he�d done, how he�d given himself away, but she�d always had that uncanny ability to see inside people�s heads. He must have done something to give her a peek inside his at the moment all the comfortable professional roles and masks and modes of relationship came unglued for him. It shouldn�t have happened. They were both Queen�s officers. That should have been all they were to one another, however his perception of her abilities and talents and readiness for high command had changed. But his own awareness had ambushed him, and in that moment of recognition, he�d recognized something else, as well, and seen her not simply as an officer, and his equal, but as a dangerously attractive woman.
And she�d seen it, or guessed it, or felt it somehow. And because she had, she�d gone back on active duty early, which was why her squadron had been sent to Adler, which was how the Peeps had captured her... and the only way they could have killed her.
A fresh spasm of white-hot fury went through his misery, and his cursed memory replayed that scene, as well. The falling body, the jerking rope, the creak and sway�
He thrust the image away, but he couldn�t push away the self-knowledge he had finally accepted as he stood there in the boat bay gallery, waiting. His awareness of it might have come suddenly, but it shouldn�t have. He should have known the way his feelings for her had grown and changed and developed. But it had all taken place so gradually, so far beneath the surface of his thoughts, that he hadn�t even guessed it was happening. Or perhaps, if he were totally honest, he�d guessed it all along and suppressed the knowledge as his duty required. But he knew now, and she was dead, and there was no point in lying to himself about it any longer.
Is it something about me? Something I do? he wondered. Or is it just the universe�s sick joke that makes it the kiss of death for me to love someone? Emily, Honor�