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"Captain Lord Young, you have heard the charges," White Haven said in that deep, quiet voice. "How do you plead?'

"Not guilty to all specifications, My Lord." Young's tenor was less ringing than he would have liked, without the note of defiance he tried to put into it, but at least it didn't quaver.

"So noted," White Haven replied. "Be seated, Captain."

Young lowered himself into his chair once more, folding his hands on the table and gripping them hard together to still their trembling, and White Haven nodded to the prosecutor, who rose in turn.

"My Lords and Ladies of the Court," she began formally, "it is the intention of the prosecution to prove that the accused did, in fact, commit the offenses listed in the specifications against him. The prosecution further intends to demonstrate..."

Young tuned the words out by a deliberate act of will, staring down at his folded hands and feeling hate and fear swirl at his core like acid. Even now, he couldn't have said which of those emotions was stronger. For all his fathers vocal, confident relief at how the court-martials board had broken down, it would take only four of the six to convict. And if he was convicted, he would die. That was the only possible sentence for the last two crimes of which he stood accused.

Yet overwhelming as the terror that woke was, his hate swirled up to match it, fueled by the humiliation and degradation of the charges. Even if he was exonerated, the taint would always remain. The unspoken whisper "coward" would follow him wherever he went, whatever he did, and it was all Harrington's fault. Harrington, the bitch who had humiliated him at the Academy by rejecting his advances and shaming him before his friends. Harrington, who had beaten him into bloody, sobbing, puking wreckage the night he caught her alone to punish her as she deserved. Who had survived every attempt by him, his family, and its allies to derail her career. Who'd covered herself with glory and made him look like a fool on Basilisk Station, and then emerged from Hancock as the unwashed herd's heroine when she herself had violated the Articles of War by refusing to pass command to the unwounded senior officer! Damn it, she was junior to him, yet it was her orders—her illegal orders—he was accused of disobeying!

Bile choked him, and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists before he could unlock them. He felt the sweat of hatred and fear prickling on his scalp and in his armpits, and drew a deep breath. He forced himself to sit square and straight in his chair while the audience and the ghouls of the media hung on the prosecutors every word, and the muscles of his jaw clenched.

Her time would come. Somehow, somewhere, whatever happened to him, the bitch's time would come, and she would pay for every humiliation she'd ever inflicted upon him.

"... concludes the prosecutions opening statement, My Lords and Ladies," Captain Ortiz said finally. White Haven nodded for her to be seated, then looked out over the audience behind Young.

"This court wishes to remind all present that the accused enjoys the presumption of innocence until and unless the validity of the charges and specifications are demonstrated to the complete satisfaction of a majority of the court. This is not, however, a civil court, and the members of the court are not judges in the civilian sense of the word. We, as the prosecutor and defense counsel, are charged with an active role in determining the facts of the charges and specifications set forth against the accused. Further, we are charged with considering the impact of those facts not merely upon the accused but upon the discipline and fighting capability of the Queens Navy. Should a member of the court address a question or questions to any witness, it will reflect not a violation of judicial impartiality, but the responsibility of the court to discover and weigh all facets of the truth.

"In addition, the court is aware of the intense public interest which has focused upon this case. It is, in fact, that interest which has led the Admiralty to open these proceedings to the public and allow the presence of the media. The court, however, admonishes the media that this is a court of military law, and that the media's representatives are present upon sufferance and not of right. This court will tolerate no abuse of its patience nor any violation of the Defense of the Realm Act, and the media is so warned."

He swept the press gallery with stern blue eyes, and the silence rang like crystal. Then he cleared his throat and raised a finger at the prosecutor.

"Very well, Ms. Prosecutor. You may call your first witness."

"Thank you, My Lord." Captain Ortiz rose once more and looked at the sergeant-at-arms. "My Lord, the prosecution calls as its first witness Captain the Countess Dame Honor Harrington."

CHAPTER EIGHT

The court-martial board filed into the conference room set aside for its deliberations. Not a word was exchanged as its members passed the Marines flanking the room's single door, and the soft click as that door closed behind them was almost deafening.

Earl White Haven seated himself at the head of the table, looking down its length at Admiral of the Green Theodosia Kuzak at its foot. Their juniors took chairs flanking the polished slab of native golden wood, two on each side, and he let his cool, expressionless eyes study them as they settled.

Of them all, he knew Kuzak best. For reasons of her own, the red-haired admiral had nourished a reputation as a strict, humorless disciplinarian almost from Academy graduation, and her green eyes and severe features could produce a poker face that went well with that perception. Except, he thought fondly, for those who knew the woman behind them. He and Theodosia had been friends literally since childhood—and once, briefly, they'd been much more. It had been a difficult time in White Havens life, a time when he'd been forced to accept at last that his wife's injuries were real and permanent. That no medical miracle would let her leave her life support chair ever again. The accident hadn't been his fault, but he hadn't been there to prevent it, either, and he'd been wracked by guilt and almost unbearable grief as he watched her turn into a frail and fragile ghost of the beautiful woman he'd loved. The woman he still loved, and with whom he could never again have a physical relationship. Theodosia had understood he could no longer be strong. That he'd needed comfort—no more and no less—from someone whose integrity he knew he would never have cause to question... and he hadn't.

Rear Admiral of the Green Rexford Jurgens, at Kuzak's left, was a very different proposition. He was a blocklike, chunky man with sandy hair and a permanently belligerent expression, but his belligerence was more pronounced than usual today, and his light brown eyes were like shutters. He didn't look like a man facing a decision; he looked like one who'd already decided and prepared himself to defend his position against all comers.

Admiral of the Red Hemphill, next in seniority after Kuzak, was harder to read, even after all the years she and White Haven had spent as adversaries. As fair-skinned as Kuzak, Sonja Hemphill was a handsome woman, golden haired and with striking blue-green eyes, but where Theodosia's face often hid the real Theodosia, the determination that was Hemphill's driving force tightened her features and made her look almost as opinionated as she actually was. Though twenty years younger and far junior to White Haven, she'd made her name early in the R&D community, and she was a leading advocate of the jeune ecole's material-based "new tactical thinking," whereas the earl was the acknowledged leader of the historical school. He respected both her personal courage and her abilities in her own areas of competence, yet they'd never liked one another, and their professional differences only made their natural antipathy worse. Their clashes had assumed mythic stature over the last fifteen T-years, and there were other worries this time: she was also a cousin of Sir Edward Janacek and heir to the Barony of Low Delhi, and, like Jurgens, her spiritual home was the Conservative Association.