"You know, if we run down to the Judge Advocate General's office, we might just be able to find someone authorized to perform a marriage."
She sputtered with laughter and looked up at him, eyes shining. "Ian, you're so full of shit your eyes are browner than usual! You know you've got to go. We'll talk about this when you get back. And for God's sake, let it keep till then! Right now, you need more things on your mind like Admiral Prescott needed more Arachnids!"
He laughed, a joyful sound of final release. Then he sobered, gripping her shoulders firmly.
"Miriam, remember what I said: I . . . promise . . . I . . . will be . . . back!"
Miriam Ortega was a Navy brat. She knew, better than most, what could happen when ship met ship in deep space combat. She had already lost a father to exactly that, and she knew no one could predict exactly where the warhead or the beam would strike. And yet, she also knew that Ian Laurens Trevayne always kept his promises.
"Yes, my precious love," she whispered. "I know you will."
As the cutter left the pale-blue reaches of the upper atmosphere for the velvet-black realm of space, Trevayne gazed out the port. For the first time in years-too many years, filled with columns of numbers on phosphor screens-he really saw the universe in which he moved and worked. His gaze ranged further and further out, sweeping over the unwinking, jewel-hard stars strewn in their myriads down the roaring, mind-numbing reaches of infinity.
God, he thought. How beautiful it is.
THE SHORTEST DISTANCE
Rear Admiral Li flinched as rolling drums assaulted her ears, then straightened her shoulders quickly. Other returning prisoners crowded the shuttle hatch behind her, and not the most jaded of them could hide his reaction to the scene.
The domed spaceport on Bonaparte's second moon was jammed with black and silver uniforms. Thousands of them! Han stared out over the sea of faces through the crashing fanfare of Ad Astra, the ancient twenty-first century hymn chosen as the Republic's anthem, and she was stunned.
A rear admiral greeted her with a crisp salute, and only reflex action brought her own hand up in response as she recognized Jason Windrider. His dark eyes glowed, and as the last bar of the anthem crashed out and the music died, his hand came down in a flashing arc. Han's matched it.
"Welcome home, Admiral!" He gripped her hand tightly.
"Thank you." Han swallowed, blinking burning eyes, and smiled. "Thank you, Admiral," she said more firmly. "It's good to be back."
"We've been waiting for you," he said warmly, "and you may as well accept the inevitable." His smile was both wicked and warm. "We're proud of you, ma'am, and you're going to have to put up with us while we show it!"
And then he was leading her down the flag-draped landing platform stair, and the roar of cheers split the bright, dome-filtered sunlight around her.
"Well!" Jason Windrider doffed his braided cap and waved at a chair. "Thank God that's over! Though I must say-" he cocked his head critically "-the Golden Lion looks good on you, Han. Sort of sets off your hair."
"Thank you," she said dryly, trying to hide her own deep emotion as she sat. She touched the Golden Lion of Terra-the highest award for valor of Republic and Federation alike. "If this is what the loser gets, I'd like to see the winner's medals!"
"You didn't lose, Han," Windrider said decisively. "You and Bob were right. We should've gone in fast and nasty, before their new forts and beams and those Godawful missiles were on line."
"Maybe," Han said, "but I surrendered, so I'm the one who's going to face a Board over it-and maybe a full Court."
"The Court already sat," Windrider said, suddenly grim. "On the admirals who ran out on you. I won't lie to you-some people were cashiered, but everyone knows you held the battle-line together in a hopeless situation and then had the good sense not to get thousands of people killed for nothing." He shrugged again. "That's more or less what the Admiralty said, in fancier language, when it recommended you-unanimously-for the Golden Lion."
"I see." Han drew a deep breath and felt the tension flow away at last.
"Do you, now?" Windrider grinned. "Actually, there's an even more tangible proof of their lordships' attitude."
"Oh?" she eyed him suspiciously. "A blindfold and a last cigarette?"
"You have an untrusting nature," Windrider said sorrowfully. Then he became more serious. "I'm afraid it's slightly non-reg, Han, and Magda wanted to give you this, but she can't make it, so I have to deputize. Here."
Han opened the small case and gasped as she saw the double stars nestled in the dark velvet. She stood abruptly, left hand rising to the single star at her collar, and her eyes were shocked.
"Yes, sir," the rear admiral said. "Congratulations, Vice Admiral Li!" He reached out and unpinned her rear admiral's star gently, then took a paired star from her and slid its pin through her collar.
"B-but I'm not ready!" Han wailed. "I was only a captain four years ago!" Yet she seemed unable to resist as he fastened the badge in place. "I just got back from surrendering an entire battle fleet!"
"Han," Windrider said severely, "sit down and shut up."
She sat obediently, too shaken to notice how brashly a rear admiral was ordering a vice admiral about.
"Better," he said. "Now listen to me. Every senior officer in the Fleet knows you and Bob wanted to attack earlier, and most of 'em know the panic that really beat us at Zephrain wouldn't have happened if you'd been senior to the bastards who-Never mind." He shook his head sharply. "But there's not a one of them who questions giving you that star. None. And no doubts will be entertained from you, either, young lady!
"Besides, we need you. Admiral Ashigara is dead, and so are Kellerman, Matucek, Ryder, Nishin, Shukov, Hyde-White, Mombora. . . ." His voice trailed somberly off, and she stared at him.
"That many?"
"And more," he confirmed. "Han, we never did have many admirals, and those we had have taken a terrible pounding; we've got to promote. I was a commander four years ago, for God's sake! If I can take my medicine and wear one star, you can damned well wear two-got it?"
"Yes, sir," she said meekly, touching her collar badges and smiling at last. "I just hope it isn't a mistake."
"Han, will you please get it through your radiation-jellied Oriental brain that you've got those stars-and that medal-because you're one of the best we've got?" She eyed him doubtfully, and he grinned. "Besides, if we don't give 'em to you, somebody might try to give 'em to me, God help us!"
The skimmer swooped downwards, and Han peered out at the lights blazing against the night. They marked a sprawling mansion, one-time home of the Corporate World manager of Bonaparte's largest chesht plantation, taken over by the Republican military when the focus of operations shifted to Zephrain.
Windrider grounded the skimmer and popped the hatches, and Han climbed out, wrinkling her nose as the reek of over-ripe chesht mingled with the fresh smell of marshes. It amazed her that something whose flavor had supplanted chocolate and vanilla alike in Terran estimation could smell so horrible in its native habitat.
Strange voices shrilled and clicked in the night, and wings fluttered as Bonaparte's equivalent of a bat flitted past. She glanced upward, but the two larger moons had set and the third, Joseph, was little more than a low-albedo lump of captured asteroidal rock. Its wan illumination barely brought a glow to the mists and hinted at rather than revealed the artificially precise spacing of angular machinery. Chesht-pickers rusting in idleness, she thought as the cool breeze off the marsh rustled the chesht pods. Bonaparte's F1 primary was hot, but the planet was near the outer edge of the liquid-water belt. Even high summer was cool, which suited Han well, for it produced a climate very like that of her homeworld.